


Shell and Bone

by Polymathema



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Cults, Graphic Description of Corpses, Horror, M/M, No Underage Sex, Religious Guilt, credence starts out underage but turns 18 in the first chapter, dead things mikey dead things, everyone needs hugs and gets them kind of, man i want to finish this but i might never, percival graves tries really hard, silent hill if it was an island in the pacific northwest
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2020-03-01 11:41:00
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 71,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18799633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polymathema/pseuds/Polymathema
Summary: He wakes up on a ferry to an island that shouldn't exist. There Credence promptly falls in love with an alcoholic former cop (and moves in with him.) That would be fine, if the woods didn't whisper in the night, if the ghosts of his past(s) weren't still after him.





	1. Flesh and Rust

**Author's Note:**

> This is unfinished because I just ran out of energy and I might never get back to it, but if you're worried about it being like however many thousands of words and no percy and credence kissing let me inform you that is not what happens here, there is LOTS of kissing i promise.
> 
> also no beta we live and die like heathens without spell check

He wakes up on a ferry over dark water, mountain sharp air, trees taller than buildings which is wrong. He should be dead, he's maybe dead. But the deep gored gashes on his arms, on his back, bleed sluggish in the mirror of the empty bathroom when he prods old wounds in the guttering light. He pulls his shirt back on, then his coat, he coughs into the sink and spits up black tar and feathers, fish scales.

The sun is coming up sickly gray dawn when he makes it back onto deck, there is an attendant up there now.

"Where are we?" He asks, pulling his sleeves down to hide the welts on his palms.

"Drink a little too much last night?" A nervous laugh, the attendant is barely older than he is, "Dusk Falls."

He doesn't know where Dusk Falls is. "Thank you." He mumbles, trips down the rail when it goes down, it feels so much better to be standing on steady ground, not that it steadies him any.

His phone is gone, his wallet, he has two ferry tokens in his right pocket, a set of keys with a little wooden doll key-chain in the left. These are not his keys, he doesn't have keys to the church, and he doesn't remember getting on the ferry let alone paying for tokens but it's good for the return trip.

Wherever that goes, from wherever he is.

"We leave tomorrow." The attendant smiles, ginger hair, freckles, nice. "Before dawn."

"Thank you." Credence murmurs, and knowing now there is no reason to linger on the pier he leaves before he can get picked up for loitering.

He needs to tend his injuries before they learn to bleed again, he needs to find a map, he needs some grounding. From the pier there is a stretch of shops, dark windows, mannequins poised to sell tourists fishing gear, hiking boots, cold-weather coats. His thin jacket will keep him through the day with the sun warming up early spring cold concrete but an overnight wait for the ferry means he'll need to go searching for paper to stuff his clothes with.

Ma left him on street corners enough, he knows the tricks.

Idle walking, he freezes, deer in the headlights, deer in the alleyway, nosing into a trash bin. God please, where is he? Where is he?

The deer's eyes are pure black, soulless, noble head bends back down to the forage, it's antlers drag blood and soft skin, he leaves it behind. Three more shops and then there is a cafe with a man sitting outside having a smoke. Credence scours the windows and door for no public restroom stickers but just finds taped up newspaper articles and mayoral rewards.

Best coffee, best pie, best burgers seventeen years running.

"Up from the city?" The man, in his seventies maybe, makes conversation.

Credence nods, half of it is right.

"Where you from?"

"New York."

A whistle, "You should talk to Percy, he's from there too."

Credence moves to excuse himself but the man pushes up and bustles forward and Credence is caught in a current, a tide, swept inside and then onward blown about till he's in front of a man sitting in a wooden booth nursing a cup of coffee, bent over a stack of notebooks.

"Percy, look another New Yorker!" The man pushes Credence forward and he bangs his inelegant legs against the table, cringing.

Percy looks up, bloodshot eyes and five-o'clock-shadow before it's even full dawn. "On the ferry?"

Credence nods, mouth dry.

"You better sit down."

Seven notebooks, two broken down pencils, a map. Percy waves off the doorkeeper and lowers his voice, "Two tokens and-" he prompts.

Credence flushes, "A set of keys?" Maybe he's dreaming, except his back, his thighs, his hands, his wrists no they all hurt so heavily, the world a thick weight, the pain a blanket of reality. He's so often lost that this couldn't be hell, in fact the absence of anyone there to be directly disappointed with him leads him to think it's more likely he's in purgatory. Ma would beat him with the cane for such vaguely catholic sentiments.

Percy nods, "Yeah, the ferry'll take you in the morning. I have a place you can crash at if you want. They won't have the answers you're looking for."

Credence shakes his head, he doesn't want answers, he just- oh God, his hands slide blood on the counter and he goes to grab for a paper towel from the dispenser but he's slow, sluggish, tired and sick and Percy grasps his wrist, turns his arm till it's scrapes and cuts, a terrible memory.

He focuses not on his broken skin but the map beneath it, a red circle, Washington State.

"Queenie! Get me the first aid kit!" Percy orders. Mister Percy?

Credence stands in the men's room with his hoodie and shirt off and a stranger picking glass out of his skin, swabbing with cotton and applying gauze. "God boy, what happened to you?"

Credence laughs, it rips out of him, he shakes his head, he can't remember but it's hardly the worse he's been, hardly.

Percy gentles his hands, wraps gauze around his throat. "Where else?"

"I'm okay sir."

"Where else or I'll drag you to the clinic. I've got fifty pounds on you easy sweetheart."

He wants to ask, why do you care, please just, and he wants to ask where he is and he wants to ask why this is happening, but dark eyes have no answers for him, just equal desperation, "Please kid."

Credence goes pale white, shakes apart like a beaded bracelet with a broken cord, all the parts of him go skittering into dark corners. He shimmies out of his tight jeans. He looks like a murder victim, the lash marks on the back of his thighs are worse than the ones on his arms. He wishes he could remember what he did wrong, what he did to deserve this.

Percy-Mister-Percy curses, hand to his mouth, "Okay, okay." He looks at the first aid kit, "Okay." There isn't a thing in the box to heal what's wrong with Credence.

Percy leaves the bathroom, comes back with heavier gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. "I can't take you to the clinic, it's not even open till one." Percy apologizes, "I'm sorry."

Credence shakes his head, he ends up vomiting up more oil, a bony spine tears up his throat.

"Jesus fuck." Percy looks terrified.

Credence remembers to breathe right when the alcohol burns into him, he screams into his bandaged hands, feathers and tar.

It's quiet then, Percy wrapping the bandage around and around. Credence sinks back into himself to the sound of penance, promises, praise, endless apologies. "Maybe, maybe you should stay here, for a little while." Percy's hands shake. "Maybe?"

Credence nods. If he's dead, what's the harm?

Queenie is the waitress and she is brandishing a broom against a man in sheriff's uniform when Credence finally comes out sluggish steps and Percy's hand at the small of his back.

"Percival Graves, I'm not surprised. Our resident sleuth. Hinny comes in, says a boy shows up on the ferry bleeding all over the diner, gonna ply him with your conspiracy theories?"

"Percy is a dear member of the community and I won't have you bullying him!" The waitress defends, broom and all.

Percy bundles him over to the booth and gathers his things, Credence wishes he had money, he's starving.

"I think you should come with me son." The sheriff says, gentle.

Percy gets between them, sharp as a bird, brittle edges hardening under the rising sun, the soft dew of dawn burning off the kind edges. "Jack, fuck off. He's an old friend, come over to visit me from New York. He just got into an accident is all, I have it covered."

"Is that so?"

"Percy r-remember that church down on-" Credence flounders, he doesn't want to be put in lock up, he doesn't want to answer questions he can't answer because he doesn't know, two tokens for the ferry, blood and coughing up bones and fish scales and death.

"The one on 35th?" Percy is pushing him toward the door.

"They tore it down." Credence murmurs.

Queenie shoves a to go bag at Percy and winks at them.

Percy drives a pickup truck that takes a few minutes to turn over and it has absolutely nothing in the way of shocks so Credence is breathless by the time they're pulling up to a cabin lakeside and it's little to do with the view. Bundled up in gauze and the man's jacket he trips over pine-needles, his sneakers dragging on stepping stones.

Percy shows him inside, "It took me three weeks shoving the keys in every fucking lock and this was where they went and no one has ever come to claim it so I mean, I guess it's fucking mine now?"

Credence pats the key in his pocket.

There are more notebooks, more maps, more everything. Percy bustles around, pushes clothing off the sofa for Credence to sit on, shoves empty whiskey bottles into an otherwise empty trash bin. "Queenie scrambled you up some eggs, unless you want coffee I have water?"

"Water please." Credence feels self conscious now. "I didn't, I didn't expect you'd bring me to your home."

Percy brings him water, "Not mine, not really, just borrowing it I guess." He sits down next to Credence and puts two tokens on the table next to the to go bag. "I'm off the same boat. Three years back I wake up on the ferry, return fare in my pocket. Unlike everyone else I just... don't go back. You're one of thousands who show up, tourists the locals say. Queenie she's off the boat too, but she's fit in better than I have, says she's waiting for her sister to find her."

Credence sips the water, it does much to soothe his sore throat.

"I ask too many questions. Jack and I don't get along, chiefly because he's a shitty fucking cop." Hard grit, sharp eyes, reads between the lines.

"You aren't though." Credence whispers.

Percy cuts him a knife of a smile, "No, and I'm going to figure out the mystery here if it kills me."

Percy solves problems for the locals, he explains that this might be anything from finding a dog to enforcing a separation. "We're on an island, the ferry comes in and leaves every other day, there isn't a hospital and the clinic isn't open on the weekend. I've had to assist an eighty year old midwife, this place doesn't even have cell towers, doesn't even have phones."

"My phone was gone, and my wallet."

"No one will ever ask for your ID, I ask Jack what's up with that and he just shrugs like it doesn't matter. Asks me if I plan on breaking any laws."

Credence eats his food quietly. Scrambled eggs, bland and saltless, but it’s something he’s used to and he doesn’t have the self confidence to ask for anything so much as seasonings.

Percy paces the worn carpet, kicks his clothing under the coffee table, "I try and call them on it, I end up making a fuss and they stick me in the drunk tank but I wake up here and no one remembers what happened." He looks at Credence, "I know it sounds crazy. Shit, Christ, I've been here so long."

Credence shrugs, "I thought, maybe, I thought I was dead."

Percy recoils, "You sound almost hopeful."

Credence looks at the table, he doesn't know.

Percy brings him a quilt and a pillow and treats him like paper lace, brittle, easily torn. "Get some rest."

"I didn't do it to myself." Credence bites out, frustration. Percy reaches out and strokes his thumb over the gauze wrapped around Credence's wrist. It flees as fast as it comes and he cringes inward, expecting, he's not sure.

"Who did?"

He doesn't know, "I can't remember, but usually Ma."

"Get some rest." Percy draws back, "I have to get some supplies from town, just take it easy. It's been so long since I've had a guest, I'd love it if you stayed a few days." He's being given an out, he knows.

Credence nods, "I'd like that, I'll pay you back however I can."

Percy ruffles his hair, "Don't worry about it kid."

He sleeps, eventually, the sound of the water breaking against the dock outside, birdsong, wind through the high trees. He shivers under the quilt, he fears sleeping means he'll wake up someplace else.

That he'll wake up at home.

He doesn't though, the sound of the truck's angry engine wakes him when the sun is going back down, dawn and dusk, liminal spaces. This whole island feels like that and he sits up, bandages itching and his hair a messy dark halo around his face. Ma said he looked like a devil with his hair that long, kept chopping it off with the dull shears.

Percy bundles in with a bag of groceries. "Are you allergic to anything?"

Credence shakes his head, follows him into the kitchen, quiet, inquisitive. There are a lot of ramen wrappers, gym drinks, protein powder. Credence covers his mouth, his smile feels like his face is broken. Broccoli, kale, carrots, three potatoes come out of the bag.

Percy looks at them on the counter with borderline hysteria. "I'll make dinner, you can go rest on the-" Credence reaches out, gathering pots and pans, "Hey, no go lay down."

"You can't cook." Credence whispers, sorts through the sad variety of vegetables and looks into the cabinets.

Percy cringes, "Not really, no."

Credence finds a can of stock and a package of forgotten orzo and makes soup. "How old are you?" He asks as it's simmering up.

"Thirty nine."

Credence doesn't sigh, it's close though, "So you were thirty six, when you came here?"

Percy nods, "On my birthday." It starts to rain quietly, plinking sounds against the wide windows overlooking the lake. "Makes it easy to keep track of how little I've figured out."

"Doesn't anyone come back to figure it out?" Credence can't imagine in all that time not one person would have returned.

"No. No one ever comes back if they go on the ferry again." Percy sounds haunted, stares out at the rain tracking down the glass, "How old are you?"

"Twenty four." Credence lies.

They eat soup and they share a bottle of whiskey between them. When the power cuts Percy lights a storm lantern like this happens all the time. "The ferry brings in supplies and when I broke in one time to check the addresses on them Grandma Bradenton caught me and told me I just needed to ask her for food so I just... I used to think in the first year that these people couldn't be real, that none of this could be real, but then Kennedy at the corner store gets beat by her shit boyfriend Troy and Breanna almost drowns in the lake."

Credence is drunk, his hands are numb, his legs are numb, all the cut open parts of him are numb. He thinks he's in love with the way Percy talks to him like he trusts him, like Credence might actually be worth something if only to listen.

"So I don't point it out, I watch and record and I poke my nose into things."

"No one, no one ever came back?" Credence can't imagine it, he can't. So many people and none of them wanted to know?

"I don't think they can, really."

"Do you, do you remember where you were before here?" Credence wonders if this is every night for Percy, whiskey and rain, blood-shot eyes and obsession.

"Yeah, I was paralyzed from the waist down and my boyfriend had just broken up with me after seven years." The bitterness is palpable.

Credence focuses on so many different parts of that it takes him a bit to catch up all the way, "So you... got better?" That feels like it might be very wrong.

"No, and my spine doesn't have the bullet running through it, but this place sure doesn't feel like a dream, and it's not hell. I was already there."

"So then, maybe it's heaven?" Credence doesn't belong here then.

Percy snorts, "I'm not a religious man." He pauses, "What's your name?"

A flush not that Percy can see it, "Credence."

Percy laughs softly not at him so much, "I take it you are?"

"I... don't know right now."

Percy changes his bandages by lantern light, shadows stretching, gentle hands. Credence feels no pain, buoyant, lifted up, set free, except the pain isn't always physical is it, "I had been going to see my... my," except that had been all wrong, he had been wrong about what they'd been, "I, he said, he'd have me come live with him, and it was bad, ma found out, I'd been saving up some money and she found it, and she kicked me out and I thought maybe, maybe it would be okay."

Credence trembles under sure hands, careful and attentive, blood rust-red and black, shadows and his own trauma reflected externally for once, "He said I was foolish, naive. There were thousands just like me and he had never intended to... that-" it's too hard, it's too much, "After I just walked and walked and then, I don't remember."

"It's okay, you don't have to go back, you can stay as long as you want. I'll help you find where your key fits if you want."

The final bandage is the one around his neck, bruising and the very edge of a lash mark that carried too far up his back. Percy is close, all of his focus on the task of his hands, careful.

Credence remembers bitterness, boyfriend of seven years, and he was never really loved, filled up with it, there is nothing waiting for him back in New York. How foolish he'd been to ever think he was worth saving.

"I want to help you figure it out."

Percy ruffles up his hair, "Okay." He smiles. "When you're ready the ferry'll be there."

Despite the whiskey Credence has terrible clarity in this moment, knows explicitly that Percy doesn't believe him, and he shouldn't because Credence couldn't care less about metaphysical answers, about the spiritual explanation, or whatever supernatural or conspiratorial solution there might be, he doesn't want to stay because there's an answer he wants to find. He wants to stay because everyone else but Queenie has left.

Because Percy is all alone and he understands that, as explicitly as it could be, for what had he ever been but alone? No one had understood him and he doesn’t understand this place but he knows loneliness, he knows what it is to be the only one.

Percy brings the covers up over his shoulders, Credence is sure he's in love right now, drunk on it, or just drunk. "Don't go outside between three and five in the morning." Percy orders. "Weird shit happens."

"Okay." Credence is exhausted, he doesn't even question it.

Percy locks the door and leaves him in the stillness of the living room, rain coming down steady soft, Credence drifts again.

At four am Credence wakes up, his digital watch glowing in his face. There is a scratching sound at the door. Slow, dragging nails, steady, leisurely.

Don't go outside, Percy said. Credence turns so his face is to the back of the couch, so he can't see out the windows, can't see the eyes looking back at him, black beady, soulless.

It's not hell, he's not dead, but the thing in the woods, the thing in the window looking in at him, that thing isn't new to Credence.

He wakes up right before dawn and makes coffee, takes stock of the kitchen again, and then stock of himself. He doesn't remember the eyes at the window, only recalls a faint dream about snakes shedding their skin and setting kerning by the spaces between scales. What words needed to be written on snakes he couldn't remember.

Percy must have finished the bottle without him because he comes down hungover, cringing at dim light, soft thanks for the coffee.

Credence knows better than to hope he could make things easier for his new... friend. New friend, he, they, they could be friends, couldn't they? He'll try to be good, to be soft, to help.

Percy reaches out and ruffles his hair up. "Thanks kid." Bullet through the spine, paralyzed and alone. Credence won't leave him, he'll be a good friend. God he'd wanted so badly to be wanted, to be kept, if he can be something useful here, he'll bend to breaking.

Crowded close on the couch, Percy brings a lamp to rest against his legs, holding Credence’s bare arms in his hands like sacrament. Bandages changed and when he’s done with the arms Credence turns, face flushed, hair a curtain to hide his shame. Percy says nothing, is careful neutrality, trained by years and embedded in the bone of him, Credence is grateful for the care and the brush of fingertips hot against his skin.

Percy lets him borrow a t-shirt and a flannel that he swims in both and ties his hair back for him. They take the ride into town silently and eat breakfast at the diner and Credence tries to think of things he can do to pay him back for the money he puts down to feed him.

"Now these pastries are new ones from my sweetie, and you gotta tell me if they're really good or just a little good because we're gonna ask the bank for a loan again." Queenie pushes something into his hands and he nibbles apple and cinnamon, closes his eyes and maybe dies because it's so good this is surely heaven.

Percy waves off the basket, "I know they're good but if I do sugar this early I'll end up crashing by noon."

Queenie rolls her eyes, "No that's all the coffee you drink."

Percy is very tactile, grasping sleeves, hand against his back or shoulders. Dips around to people and lets Credence widely become an obscure aside next to him, a reference to "My friend from New York," and everyone ignores him.

He helps Percy get a cat out from under a car and then he sits with a very slender woman as Percy accompanies her brother to remove her belongings from her ex-boyfriend's apartment.

For lunch they sit at the pier and watch fishing boats come in, eating sandwiches from the diner. "Don't they go to the shore? Couldn't another boat go... wherever else there is?" The horizon is nothing but water, behind them the mountains.

"The fishing boats don't berth off the island, and if anyone has tried they've never come back to tell me about it. About two dozen a year I'll get with an interest past that initial panic over where they are and why they’re here, maybe three say they'll come back. None of them ever do."

"We could take a boat-" Credence feels the panic hit him like a wall, hands to his face, hyperventilating, shaking.

Percy is soft cursing, gentle hands, breathe, breathe, pulls Credence to his side and puts his hand to his chest and they sit with the waves, the birds overhead.

Credence hides his face against a broad shoulder, laundry detergent and pine needles.

"You don't have to go anywhere, you don't have to leave." Percy tells him. He sounds like this is an argument he's had with himself a thousand times.

Later Credence is making a roast, Percy drinking a rum and coke and surprisingly lucid from his post on the counter sitting with his back to the cupboards. "If there is a bank to get a loan from there must be some sort of interconnectivity to the rest of the world."

Percy nods, "A few months in I got twitchy living off Hinny's goodwill and went in. But I mean, it might be some kind of government experiment. I checked for bugs but I've never found any listening equipment, at least not the kind I was familiar with."

A part of Credence considers that other people might listen to Percy and think he's gone around the bend but those people didn't grow up listening to Mary Lou.

Credence is careful of his bandages but he still has to sit still afterward for Percy to change them. He could do it himself but something about the dedication and white-knuckled grip Percy has on the first aid kit leaves Credence to take the care from him.

"I don't have any savings... Ma took them before kicking me out, but I have experience working with presses, I was, I noticed there was a local paper, I figured I might apply to see if they'll take me on?"

"You don't have to, I could float you here, I really don't mind." The thing is it's obvious Percy really doesn't mind, is desperate to have someone close, Credence sees it in him as blatant as a mirror, whiskey and rum, Credence isn't ready to fall that hard again, not yet.

"Just a part time job." He smiles soft, nervous.

Percy smiles back, warmer though, "You can stay as long as you want, we'll start looking for the door to your key tomorrow though. Queenie found hers her first week, I was so fucking angry, but I mean, at least Hinny took me in."

"Is he the elderly man outside the diner all the time?"

"Yeah, he sold me his truck for cheap too, they don't have a car dealership here as you can see."

The first week it is following quickly behind, stepping into shadows and learning the shape of his body when it's not being bent under expectations and threats. His skin stitches together each day, morning light glinting on old scars and promising him these wounds too will heal. The first week is Percy telling him he never has to leave with every action and Credence coming to believe the truth of it.

The first week is also the voice coming through the keyhole, sweet words Credence doesn't remember in the morning. It is eyes watching him and Percy coming into the living room and cocking his shotgun and pointing it at the door and sitting with his whiskey bottle between his knees, gentle sweet telling Credence to go back to sleep. It is Credence waking up in the yard on the fifth night with his hair mussed, twigs and leaves stuck to him and Percy changing his bloodied muddy bandages after a hot shower.

The second week starts with a sound like a baby screaming, not even dawn yet and Credence almost has his hand on the door when Percy grabs him from behind and spins him back, whisper against his neck. "It's a fox."

Percy drags him away, Credence looks at the clock over the door, blinking digital numbers, 4:44.

Credence shakes, clutches Percy's arms, goes limp against him, "How can you stand it?" But he knows, whiskey and rum.

Dawn finds them in the kitchen, Percy braced against the counter looking out at the fog rolling over the lake, the tree line hiding secrets that are impossible to decipher in their obscurity when the workings of man and the burdens of blood are the resources at one's disposal. His shirt is off, or was never on, and Credence is sitting in a chair behind him, legs parted to be protector of the man who stands between them. Between Percy's hands is a mug of coffee liberally spiked with bourbon and powdered aspirin.

Credence's hands are cold against knotted spine, against nothing so much like scar tissue, against perfection.

But he knows it happened, that it wasn't a dream Percy came up with. He knows faith and belief, he knows not the blood of man but the soul of humanity, he knows prayer.

Credence makes them breakfast while Percy makes them safe, Credence watches him green flannel and a shotgun, stomping through the bushes. When he comes back in there are swipes of blood along his jeans. "I'll tell Jack but he'll say it was a fox." Just like he had last night in the small hours, eyes watching them from the impenetrable shadows lurking outside.

"What was it?" Credence asks but Percy just shrugs.

"Weird shit."

There is an abandoned motel on the other side of the lake, they hike there after breakfast, Percy keeping him stable as they blaze a trail. Seven separate times Percy's hands are strong and sure at his waist lifting him over a log or down off a rock. Credence imagines New York, and he'd be lying if he said he didn't miss it, but he'd give up his MetroCard to keep Percy's hand on his back.

Most of the doors are open and Percy waves him away from their reclaimed innards. "It never fits an open door. Keys are for locks." He shrugs, "I don't know why, that's just the way it is."

Credence nods, takes the keys out and holds them up against the sunlight, little Spanish doll dangling from the chain, the cheeks painted pink cheer eternally or until time wears the paint down.

"What if someone gets hurt, wouldn't the sheriff do something? What if it isn't a fox?" Credence wiggles the key in a door, the teeth grind and catch, the lock doesn't turn. He cups his hands against the sun, peering between boards of rotting wood to see through cracked glass at dim empty rooms. The bed is still made, the television has been shattered inward, glass and circuit boards. 1970's technology covered up in a blanket of dust.

"If you're serious about applying at the newspaper, you'll find the answer but no one gets hurt, no one has their car stolen, no one beats their girl for the sheriff to get involved."

Credence throws him a look, tight and strained, jiggling at another lock, "Clara Kinkaid had a whole ring of bruises around her wrist."

Percy ruffles his hair, "For the sheriff to get involved. The first week I put my name in the paper I had so many people coming around to ply me with fresh bread and to take care of their problems. Discrete, under the table."

"So, whenever something like this happens, the Sheriff doesn't do anything?"

Percy shrugs, hands in the pockets of his rather tight jeans so Credence turns his attention back to the doors and not the way his t-shirt is riding up. "My first month in I found a body's worth of blood behind the bookstore. I report it and when we get there it's fucking gone, not just gone but the whole place is clean like it's been scrubbed, no dirt, no nothing, and Jack just laughs and tells me to lay off the whiskey." He shakes his head, "I'd think Jack was covering shit up if he wasn't so earnest in helping out."

"He'd wanted me to go with him that first day."

Percy nods, "We get runaways a lot, I catch some of them but usually they're not in our boat, they're just up from Seattle or something."

"So, he thought I ran away? What would he have done, send me back?"

"The station has a radio, I've never asked why we don't have phones but we have power, I probably should but I doubt anyone will have a good answer. He'll radio in and see if there is any information. Had a young girl come up with her boyfriend and Jack nearly took his head off, she ended up being thirteen, went back on the ferry the next day."

Credence weaves between shafts of light, his scuffed up sneakers crunching broken glass and leaves. "I don't want to go back."

"You're not a run-away Credence, your mother threw you out, I wouldn't worry about it." Percy smiles at him, "Besides, you're an adult."

The guilt twists him up inside like a fork in his gut, twining up his entrails like spaghetti. "Yeah."

They eat lunch on a derelict pier, a boat sunk beneath the clear water, fish darting over perfectly shaped pebbles. Credence's legs are crossed under him and Percy is leaning against his arm, the cold pack between their hips. There is no liquor today, just ham sandwiches and ginger-ale.

Credence throws his ferry tokens into the water as hard as he can, "I'm seventeen." he closes his eyes very tight, doesn't open them till Percy ruffles his hair.

"Yeah, I'm not telling Jack." Percy laughs, half manic. "How old was that guy promising you lies?"

Credence shakes his head, "I don't want to think about him anymore."

"Do you want to stay with Queenie? I don't think she'd mind."

"You're nothing like him." Credence knows it's the worry beneath it all and Percy cringes, "I'm not worried." They are as fragile as the glass broken outside empty motel rooms on a quiet lakeside, in need of repair, too long alone. Forgotten path sides and dark forests. "I'd rather stay with you."

Percy looks out toward the still lake, toward where Credence had thrown his fare back over the water, his payment over the river Styx. "Okay."

When they're moving to go back to Percy's cabin Credence is stilled, turned back toward the water and Percy jerks his hand out, his own coins skipping like rocks along the surface and then they're gone, sunk under the mirror-glass. "There isn't anything left for me anyway."

Credence wants to kiss him but he knows that's a stupid idea, not least of which he just confessed the very reason why Percy wouldn't be okay with that but also because he doesn't need to start bleeding inside too, ruptured open from affection and sick sweet hope for its return. He is an injury, made to suffer. "We'll figure it out here."

"You're a sweet kid Credence."

He tries not to flinch.

Percy stops letting him at the bottle or pouring him a glass and that's all that changes between them in the next few days. Credence applies at the paper, having to scribble his name out with a blotty pen, ink spills and made up dates. The references have no lines for phone numbers. He puts in Percy, doesn't know a last name but he figures they'll know.

His first day he spends it learning how to use the big press, slotting typeface by hand, "Everything is antique." He marvels to Percy in the kitchen. Percy is pouring over receipts pulled out of the trash, Credence is peeling carrots.

"Everything here is like that, nothing over the eighties and then you've probably won the jackpot."

"Couldn't we just order things through the mail?" Credence needs better shoes for one, and the shops in town, they had things to sell but they too looked antique most of the time, or like they'd been suspended for decades, awaiting new eyes to glance over them.

"Yeah but that's us, what we do isn't weird. It's everyone else."

"Ma ran a Evangelical Paper, we had computers and large scale printers. I mean, the basics are the same but I've only seen this kind of printing press in a museum, Modesty would have loved to see it, my sister I mean."

Percy laughs softly, "They don't even have a computer at the station okay? I went off about it and it was one of the nights everyone conveniently forgot I stole a cop car and drove it into the lake."

Credence almost drops everything into the sink, "What?" His hands are shaking.

"Yeah, one of the times they shoved me into the drunk tank, I told you about them, well I got so fed up with everything, so angry." Bitterness and Percy washes it down with bourbon, his tone mellowing again, "So I'm going under and then I'm back home in bed, the car I wrecked is fine, and no one speaks a word of it."

"Were you okay?"

"Yeah."

Credence is still shaking, "Please don't do something like that again."

Percy turns back to his receipts, "Don't worry sweetheart, I'm not prone to repeating things that change nothing."

Potato salad, fried fish, iced tea all spread out on the porch as the sun goes down. Credence waves at Queenie as she bikes up the drive and sets a third plate for her. "How are you settling in honey?" She's brought a loaf of banana nut bread.

"I like it here, I got a job at the paper setting type and helping to fact check. I get to go to the library a lot, when it's open." It's very seldom open, even when the hours printed on the door say it should be. He's never once seen a librarian there, just checks the door to see if it's unlocked.

"We haven't found where his key goes yet though." Percy has seconds of everything, which helps Credence find his calm.

"Mabel over at the boutique offered to order you some boots and clothes in your size, now don't feel bad it's just we noticed you're in Percy's stuff more than half the time and he's... broader."

Credence has noticed, thank you Queenie, that Percy is thick and fit and can easily bench press him, thank you very much he doesn't need it pointed out to him by strangers. "I should give you back your clothes anyway I guess."

Percy shakes his head sharply, "You keep them as long as you'd like." He sounds so genuine.

"How do you like the bread?" Queenie asks him while they're doing the dishes.

"It was great, I've never liked bananas too much but it didn't taste like them."

Queenie laughs softly, "That's because we can't afford real ones, it's parsnips for texture and banana extract."

"The imports here are what they would have been in the 50's or 60's, heavily priced for non-local produce." Percy explains.

"When is your birthday sweety? I'll bake you a cake." Queenie hip-checks him playfully and he laughs, self-conscious.

"In a month, the 28th." He'd been counting it down by the day, because that's when he'd been promised he had a place, a home, a lover that wanted him there. But he'd had nothing, was nothing, and now he's here. He never wants to leave, regardless of the circumstances that led him here, the things that might be waiting in the small hours of the night.

Percy drives her home, leaving Credence on the sofa with a dogeared Agatha Christie novel and the door open to let the air in, screen door locked. He's halfway in when the silence is broken by steps on the porch but no returning sound of aged engine. He knows he shouldn't look up but he does.

Gellert is standing on the porch, hair slicked back, eyes mismatched as always, dressed like the wealthy club owner he is.

Credence can't breathe, his chest feels like it's piled over with rocks, he's waiting, waiting, but the man says nothing, just peers in at him like an experiment under glass.

The truck comes up the drive and Gellert is still there at the kitchen door, watching him and then the neutral look on his face breaks with his smile, wide and bloody teeth and Credence screams with the pain of it, and Gellert is nothing but black lines and blood, skin ripped apart at the seams like carrot peelings.

Percy finds him on the kitchen floor, bloody bandages, sobbing, frantically he clutches to him but there isn't anything at the door anymore. Maybe there was never anything there to begin with, except what cut him up then, what broke open his skin? Memories?

Percy sticks him in the bath and kneels next to him, cleaning freshly gored wounds, hands shaking, it's maybe emotional, maybe physical. He hasn't seen Percy drink all day. "You'll be okay. I'd like to take you to the clinic tomorrow if you'd let me?"

"I... okay." Credence nods.

When wounds have been dressed and he's been put into a baggy t-shirt they curl up on the sofa in the dark, curtains down and the porch light on so they can see the shadows reflecting inward, retain a sense of security in knowing they'll be the ones in the blind spot.

Credence shivers right into him when Percy drapes his arm around his shoulders, they draw together under the quilt Credence has been using. "It wasn't human, I thought it was at first, it looked like, it looked like someone I knew, but it wasn't them. It peeled open and when it did the wounds formed on me, and I went to close the door against it, I was terrified it would come in, or it would go around the porch and find you."

Percy tightens his hold, just a little. "You're okay. I've got you." He sounds desperate for that to be true.

They sleep tangled together, Credence's body curved into Percy, cradled in his lap. Credence wakes to crickets, darkness, the flickering porch light going dim, browning out like the power shortages in that dismally hot summer a world ago but the room here is cold and his heat borrowed from strong arms keeping him close, desperate to lend protection even in his sleep. 

The whispering isn't English, what drips through the keyhole like oil and tar, sluggish and slow. Credence unfolds himself from the safety of Percy's embrace. He crawls along the floor, low and out of sight of the windows, presses against the wood and throw rugs with bandaged hands and bruised knees. He presses up against the door, his cheek to the wood, his hand curling beside it, nails scratching to the cadence of the whisperer.

"No, go away." He says soft as silk, "I'm going to protect him."

The thing rolls against the door, hissing, heavy whispers, a thousand inflections but none of them human. It is not that which came before that fell apart and left it's mark. This is something else. Credence coughs, dizzy, it turns again, shakes the door in it's hinges. An owl beats its wings frantically against the window, skeletal face shrieking, Percy yanks him away, drags him along the floor till they collapse mid way in, Credence is coughing up knuckle bones and tar, feathers and fish scales.

Percy is shaking as they lay on the floor together facing each other, Credence's cheek is sticky and smells sweet, not like bile or rot but like licorice. He closes his eyes tightly and tries to tamp down the tide, his tears track sideways, catch against his messy hair. When the bottle is pressed to his lips he drinks hard whiskey and doesn't choke as it burns him up inside, says a prayer.

Percy drinks until he stops shaking, until his eyes are soft and his hands are softer, carding through Credence's hair, pushing it back from his face to the song of waves on the dock, crickets in the dark. "Percy," Credence begins, curls a little closer, his hands catching in Percy's shirt, tugging him forward, body aching pain and purpose, "I want-" oh Lord does he want, oh he wants so much he shouldn't have and Percy is arguably very drunk and taking what he wants would be very bad.

He rests their foreheads together, soothes down Percy's shirt, "We'll be okay." He promises.

"They don't all go back on the ferry, they don't all stay and make a home." Percy whispers dark between them, the sound of his voice is coins skipping over the surface of a lake, glass underfoot, chasing the sun on dark water as the ferryman smiles vague concern. "Some of them go into the forest and we never see them again." Percy's hand goes hard in his hair, against his shirt. "They can't have you." His eyes are bourbon and honey, silk over a blade, Credence follows as he licks his lips. "They can't have you."

They are poisonous, little glass bottles stoppered up, Credence leans forward incrementally to press a shallow kiss to the corner of Percy's lips, chaste, contained, vicious and possessive. Dawn threatens gray light, fog over the water, he murmurs pleasure when Percy's grip is harder, he clings forward, fevered, hungry, nothing to him but hollow bones and famine. How many years has he been turning up in his own skin, waiting to be wanted like this, to be kept?

"I'm not going to leave you." But can he promise he won't go into the woods? Can he promise anything? "We'll be okay." He repeats, prayers between them.

So much for not falling fast, so much for avoiding the rough drop, so much for saving himself the noose. Afterall he was struck from the mold suffering, his own cross to take, forgive him the sacrilege. He cannot help who he is.

Credence isn't afraid, he was never afraid, he has been numb, apathetic since waking up on the ferry and before that. He remembers the last time he'd really been afraid was when he had something to lose. He's not afraid for himself and he wasn't afraid for himself looking at that lie on the porch, but for Percy he is terrified. Living too long on empty, running toward answers he doesn't need to find, toward a truth he won't survive.

He takes another drink of the whiskey and then it's gone. He pulls Percy up with him, weaves them toward the bathroom. Percy is passive at first and then when Credence drops his hands to the button on his jeans he isn't, he is hard and sharp, teeth against Credence's throat, a sob caught between his teeth. Percy drags back like a beaten dog cornered, steps right into the shower, pressing his back up against the tiles. Soft eyes wide with horror.

Credence moves slow, languid, smoke and fog, eyes lowered, "It's okay. Just a shower." His skin burns with the imprint of teeth, his own are bared with his empty smile, he feels the cricket hum under his broken skin, the drag of waves, and in his eyes the pale full moon, keeps them low, keeps them half closed, let Percy not see the monster he's let into his life. "It's okay we'll be okay."

They undress one another, Percy's hands shaking on buttons and zippers, his eyes still too wide, blown out black in the dim light. The soft hours of gray day and it's safe here the forest can't get in, except for the part that's been in Credence all along, oil and bones heavy turning, the woods are already inside. He's taller than Percy but he makes himself smaller, hunched shoulders, curved spine, broken winged bird, drowned in the river and pulled up in tatty fishing nets.

"They can't have you." Percy pulls him close, broad chest, strong arms, presses kisses to Credence's dark hair. "I'll keep you safe." From the woods, from himself, Credence shivers into him.

Credence feels the inhuman chitter sound working in his chest and he captures it between his teeth before it can rip out of him and break the tenderness. He reaches out blind to mess with the taps till he can get the water running. Percy cradles the back of his head between his hands, forces Credence's face up so he shuts his eyes.

"It's okay Percy." Credence whispers, "I'm not going anywhere."

"We need to talk about this, you need to-" Percy starts and Credence won't be able to keep the terror inside the cage of his bones, won't be able to keep it inside if he keeps talking so he puts his hand licorice black water and blood against Percy's mouth and shakes his head, eyes still shut tight.

"No, I don't want to live with Queenie."

Percy sighs against his hand.

Credence presses his face to wet collarbone, keeps it chaste, keeps it neutral. "We'll be okay." He promises and finally he can open his eyes without the woods escaping. He looks down further, and then up, dragging his hand away. Percy's face is smeared with red. Credence tugs him till the water washes it all away.

"I bit you, that's hardly okay."

Credence cringes, "I'm sorry, I took advantage."

Percy starts like he's been slapped, "No, no you-" he shakes his head sharply, "You are seventeen, you've been... I can't even imagine the shit you were putting up with before here, but nothing about our relationship is okay and, and I- don't ever blame yourself. You're not an adult and you're not responsible for anything I do."

Credence presses his hands to his own face, tastes blood and ash, incense smoke, "You're inebriated and I pressed when I knew you didn't want it, you think I'm a kid."

"You are!" Percy braces himself against the wall, no part of them is touching and Credence is freezing inside, turning up slush muddy and disgusting, tamp down that keening need in the pit of him but it's ravenous, a gaping maw hungry for warmth. For the physical comfort of Percy's tender care, cradled and kept safe. "The problem isn't even that you pressed, the problem isn't a lack of want Credence."

Credence's eyes are too dark when they catch Percy's, "Oh." He whispers, he can feel the sink of teeth against his throat again, impression of a memory, he wonders if they are as livid in the mirror as they are in his mind. He comes back to his body, sinks into reality completely with the knowledge that they are both far from dressed, under hot water.

Percy tends his wounds, sweatpants low on the sweet indent of hips, abdomen tight when Credence's sluggish blood pulses against the alcohol swab.

"They should have healed by now." Percy gentles the oldest marks, not the ones from last night but the ones from two weeks ago. In a few hours he will be feeling all of them when he's meant to be hauling heavy reams of paper to the press, moving the racks that hold the typeface. There is so much concern for Credence's physical form, it soothes the sickness burning inside of him too, the want. "We'll go back to the clinic."

"They're better than they were before." Credence shrugs.

He makes breakfast while Percy walks the porch and the tree line. There is no added blood to his clothing but he keeps the gun close throughout their meal. Credence wonders if Percy knows how useless bullets would be. He's been here so long but he's too grounded in physicality, it screams at him each time Percy's knee meets his, every time Percy's hand gentles against his shoulder or back, pushes his hair out of his face.

Credence knows faith. "We're almost out of bacon."

Percy snorts amusement and the long night finally breaks, "I'll get some on my way to pick you up from work."

By the end of the first month Credence is constantly hungry, his body too thin, and the whispers through the keyhole, under the door, through the drains, from the attic, he can almost catch individual words. Come the kitchen sink sings before he drowns the voice under hot water. Drink the keyhole says when he puts his ear up against the door while Percy sleeps on the couch, hand twitching for a body that has broken from his side. Bleed the ceiling creaks above them.

His bones ache like they're older than his flesh, like they're older than his memories. His hands curve around typeface and paring knives, Percy catches them in his own the morning of his birthday and breathes warmth into them. "I got you something." The leather gloves are lined with something soft, they're warm and stretch against his aching knuckles.

He has ink stained hands when he stands out on the porch of the newspaper, he worries about getting ink on his new gloves but it's dipping down in temperature, the sun cut through trees, dappled light against his black tipped fingers. He moves to go back inside but the doorknob has no give, locked up for the day.

There is a spout around the side of the building so he treks along. His sneakers crunch leaves when he jumps off the porch, and he freezes in place, stomach turning up.

He'd once been convinced these eyes were supernatural, unreal and capable of seeing things Credence could never even imagine. Credence had too much faith maybe, at least the boy he used to be did. When Gellert had found him working the street corner with Ma's pamphlets and that tie-dye sign filled with hatred and self hatred he'd smiled at him, "God hates a lot of things, can you give me a list?"

Credence hadn't given him a list but Gellert had given him one, a list of things that led him along, strung him along on empty promises.

The chittering comes from gray bloodless lips, Gellert's face cracks open. Inhuman sounds, and it's the same noise Credence can feel welling up in him, the noise he can't drown out, the sound in his stomach that won't be pacified with bacon and beef roast.

He knows Percy thinks he was abused, he knows Percy thinks Gellert raped him, that Ma sold him to Satan, or something like that. He knows Percy is terrified of him for all the wrong reasons.

"Go away." He hisses anger and ink, blood.

The thing is Percy doesn't really think he's a kid, it's a wall and Credence is smart enough to feel the border between them, the thin veil keeping them apart because he'd already known someone who thought he was a kid, that mask of a man staring at him chittering in this empty space between the paper and the post office. Gellert had called him a man and thought of him as a child, easily manipulated and left in the gutter. A thousand boys just like him. "Go away." He repeats, advancing, sneakers dragging traction on dirty sidewalk. Rage boiling tar in his stomach.

He's eighteen now, and Percy doesn't think he's a kid but he calls him that to keep Credence safe. No one before him had ever cared but Percy had held his wrist in early morning light, blood and ferry fare between them, Percy cared.

Credence feels his skin open up, blade to bone. Run away, runaway.

He's not dead, he didn't die.

"Credence?" Percy calls from around the building. Mismatched eyes roll to the side, tracking the new voice, the new sound, Gellert's face splits in half right down the middle, opening up like a flower, rot and decay slick out between the folds of flesh. There is not skull inside of him, nothing so human. Memories hurt worse than teeth sinking into his skin, but some of those memories are teeth sinking in anyway.

"Go away." He stomps forward and then turns, gasping with the pain of his throat scratched over. Percy is at the mouth of the alleyway then, curiosity and worry. Credence watches as horror dawns on his face, Credence's hands going to his throat. There is no terrible thing here but Credence, there is nothing here but blood.

Percy runs, almost skidding on fallen leaves, panic and protective urges. Credence falls into him, the chittering caught between his gritted teeth.

Credence sits on the clinic table and holds his chin up as the doctor tends to him. It's not particularly deep but Percy had carried him straight there and he couldn't argue the worry down. The rest of him will wait, except the second the doctor steps out to let them gather their things Percy crowds into him, tugging at his dark jacket.

His arms are gashed open, when he doesn't fight back Percy strips him out of his shirt too. The bite marks are perfect circular indentations. A memory of desire, maybe it had once been Credence's, he's not sure anymore.

Percy buries his face against Credence's hair and holds him tightly, "I'm so sorry, I should have been there."

Credence doesn't want to bleed into Percy's nice blue shirt, he keeps his hands to himself. "It was my fault."

"None of this is your fault, god Credence, how could you even think that?" Percy draws back to take his face between his hands, he keeps gauze in his pockets, alcohol swabs, a flask of bourbon, necessary things. His breath never smells like liver failure or alcoholism, Credence is enraptured by the flecks of gold in the iris of his eyes, the compassion clear on his face. He keeps things for Credence in his pockets and takes care of him, and Credence wonders if three years back he would have been as necessary in Percy's life.

He knows he wouldn't be, and he feels guilty that he prefers him like this. Broken open and pure, the bleeding heart of him caught between Credence's teeth. He lowers his gaze, watches Percy tend to his skin, but his heart keeps bleeding.

"You haven't done anything to deserve this." Percy tells him and Credence imagines Percival Graves, hard and stiff, hands steady and perfectly clean. Would he wear nice suits, would he drink from a dented flask, would he smile at Credence soft and lazy in the early dawn and sleep on the couch tangled up with him to keep the woods from having him?

"You've done nothing wrong Credence." Percy doesn't understand belief, too practical, too grounded in reality, but he believes in Credence anyway.

Credence is too much belief, too little physicality, he feels unmoored, his own blood and bone is an obscurity to him, clouded in morning's fog. Percy touches his ribs where they protrude from his sides like the metal bands at the bottom of a boat. He breathes in cold air and dust motes and Percy's hand comes away tacky with blood. Staggered breath and Credence knows in the shifting between them, the way Percy presses into the space between his parted legs that he would be another sad story, another piece of paperwork.

Three years ago and Credence would have been fifteen, three years ago and he would have been a body on a beach maybe. Percival would have prodded bleached skin with gloved hands. Crime scene tape and technicians. Moon-white eyes, dead eyes, Credence feels his gaze cloud over, crickets and dew-soaked grass under his soft skin, deep dark water, mirror-glass. His blood still flows and Percy is so attentive, wrapping him up with shaking hands, "You'll get sick."

"We don't talk about this." Percy grits out. His many attempts, his eventual failures, lofty ideals. Precious to him every try, Percy trembles between his thighs and Credence hitches his hips forward to wrap his legs too long around Percy's back, pulls him in. They don't talk about this either.

Percy starts back but he has no place to run, the clinic is quiet, the door is shut, and Credence looks up at him, puts his hands back against the table to brace. "You don't have to do it alone, it doesn't make you weak."

Percy surges into him, precious and too physical, teeth and hands, Credence sobs relief. Lips drag, bruise, hurt, fingers carve into him like he's made of clay. He bears his throat and Percy sets his teeth above the bandage. They don't have to talk, please less talking.

Credence finds his physicality in the grit of Percy's panted breath, the groan that shivers through his teeth and settles into Credence's skin, tightens around his spine. Percy keens like a wounded animal against his skin and Credence drags him closer with his hips, the press of his thighs, ankles crossed at the small of Percy's back.

He has never been wanted this much, it smothers over him like a blanket, metaphorical and oppressive. There is no guesswork, no subterfuge.

Percy breaks from him, hands on his thighs, strong and sure and even though Credence knows the press of them apart, the tender strength is meant to free him from the confines, it feels for one pure intake of breath, one frozen tick of the clock, like Percy is shoving his legs apart for more.

He falls back against the table his shoes banging against the metal side. Percy paces two bodies apart, panting, pale.

Credence curls inward, sits hunched forward on the table. "Sorry, I'm sorry." He whispers.

Percy almost sobs, it's thick in his voice, "None of this is your fault, but you can't live with me anymore Credence."

He nods, hands pressed into his eyes. "Okay."

Queenie lives closer to town, and she sets him up in her spare bedroom after dinner and chocolate cake with eighteen candles. Percy lingers only a little but Queenie turns in at ten every night so he's gone at nine thirty, the sound of the engine lingering long after. Credence leaves the blinds open, lays in the darkness till the whispers begin. He can feel the ache of his bones, the burn and stretch of his abused skin, the imprint of Percy's attraction.

What is best for him and what is best for Percy, where is blame to be placed and what is Credence to do with himself. He’s not dead, not anymore, not inside where so long he had been living on a half-light of hope fed to him by drops, a tortured existence. Where is his hope now? Not here in Queenie’s soft house, as much as he has grown to like her. Hope is a broken man in a lakeside cabin who promised to protect him knowing full well he couldn’t. They both have broken hope in them, and this is not his home.

Credence sits up and puts his face against the glass, cool and comforting. The eyes that look in at him are both his own and alien, the face that mirrors him welcoming.

He is too much faith, too many whispers in his blood, he pushes the window up.

The night air is cold and there is no one to grasp his arm and pull him back, no one to keep his bare feet from hitting the ground under the window. There is no mirror-him, no clock ticking, no whispering from the trees. The night is blissfully still, welcoming.


	2. Feather and Blood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which credence is a soft smoke boy and percival stops drinking

_ The First Year _

 

"So you left him with Goldstein and he was gone in the morning, look he probably left on the ferry. He probably decided it was time to go home." Jack lights a cigarette leaning up against the railing outside the Seven Trees Diner. 

"He didn't have ferry fare, what can I fucking do to get you to get the search party together? He didn't leave!"

"He's not a child either, and you know we wait 48 hours Percival, the ferry'll be berthing tomorrow morning and you can ask if they saw him."

"Or you could radio right now!"

Jack shrugs and Percy stalks away teeth gritted angry sharp.

He goes back to the empty bedroom, the open window, the unmade bed. Credence's key is on the bedside table where it had been left the night before. A half drunk glass of water is next to it. On the floor at the very edge of the scrap knit carpet are Credence's scuffed up sneakers. The outside of the house is scratched up a little, the hinges have been pried at and have some damage around the edges but there is no blood, no crushed bushes, no torn hair.

He sits on the edge of the bed facing the window and holds the keys in his hand, letting the impression bleed into his skin. He is still there when Queenie gets off work. 

"We'll get up super early and go talk to the ferryman and then check the hiking trails." She forces the cheer into her voice. They will not find him, they never find them when the forest takes them.

"He said he wouldn't leave me." Percy pushes his hair back, looks out the open window. "This is my fault."

"Oh honey no," Queenie steps up to put her hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently, "This isn't your fault." 

He probably believes it just about as much as Credence had when he'd said the same words.

Percy curls up on his side on the couch in the living room of his borrowed cabin. The quilt Credence had been using is tucked around him and the lights are off despite the lateness of the day. With the door wide open his sharp eyes can track the edge of the forest, the overgrown yard filled with things he had accrued over the three years he had lived here. There are rusty bikes and oil drums, bird feeders and broken fountains. On the coffee table are notebooks filled with his own precise handwriting. One of them is Credence's, a gift of paper and pen to keep his thoughts contained.

Credence had loved it, heart filled up with affection, just a few days in and Credence had been enthralled, bewitched. When Percy reaches out and flips the book open to the first page Credence's eloquent handwriting calls, beckons, pleads. A conversation they'd never had, Credence filled up with wanting but it is too dark here and the silence falls between them again. The notebook had been forgotten. Except it hadn't, dark eyes and a promise, he had left it behind.

Percy rests his hand over a half-empty bottle of whiskey and leaves it there, letting his body-warmth and shaking sink into the glass and warm the liquid inside, waiting, eyes trapped on wind ruffled tree tops, dark against the starry sky.

Percy's boy had not been on the ferry, he had not come back, when the Sheriff consents to call enough locals together to send out a party into the wilderness his boy is not found nestled between trees waiting for him. After three days they call off the search when no scraps of clothing are found, when there is nothing remaining but the delicate memories that tangle into Percy's every waking moment. As short a span that Credence filled, he is irreplaceable in Percy's life.

Of Credence Percy has three physical remains: a key, a pair of shoes, and a notebook.

Percy is not a park ranger, the woods hold no answers for him. He is a policeman so he considers the evidence, arranged on the kitchen table next to Credence's favorite place, where he had cut up carrots and peeled potatoes. Percy's coffee goes cold in the stretches he stays bent over his notebook making a list of the places they had already tried the key next to a list of things he can remember about Credence.

He still hasn't opened Credence's notebook again, not after the night before, it's secrets wait to be unraveled.

Credence had been seventeen when they met, possessing of a body that fooled the eye, long legs, slender wrists. Credence had just turned eighteen with a body not free of the tethers of his past, a legacy of abuse that kept being inflicted by a force Percy could not defend against. He had prayed before every meal, took himself to bed with his hands clasped and more prayers on his tongue. He had been quiet and reflective and he had looked at Percy's ruin of a life and understood he could nestle himself a place there.

Right next to the whiskey bottle and the shotgun, tucked in between sleepless nights and filled notebooks. It had been obvious from the beginning that Credence wouldn't be kept still unless he was kept physically but Percy had refused to be another bruise.

Now he is the one bruised and alone again. Credence's love is etched at the bottom of a list of guesses and observations, Percy written carefully with a shaking hand.

After a short few weeks a scar rends him worse than any that had come before, paralytic, the bullet removed but the pain remains. Credence is out there somewhere, it is up to Percy to find him.

He has no leads, not really, he has the house and the memories of Credence in it, he has a shared starting point but access to resources outside of this island lost in time are denied him. The greater mystery of this place is wrapped up in Credence's own. So he has one choice, he needs to take interviews.

"A studious boy, he'll be back, he always comes back anyway." Mouse is the singular editor at the paper.

"What do you mean, he's been here for all of his shifts before hasn't he?" Percy follows Mouse as he toddles along, old age has bent the man's back into a painful curve, he walks with a cane, slow careful steps between the largely empty desks. At one point there had been six reporters on staff, but it is a point far before Credence had come to work there. Only two desks are occupied by something other than old boxes and dust.

"Well he's such a good boy, very applied, but he'll just vanish for days at a time. I had been considering him for an apprenticeship in journalism."

Percy bites his lip, "Oh, he never said where he was going?"

"Oh you know kids, probably up to the cabins or something." Mouse chuckles, good humoured. "He'll wander back in on monday."

"And that's Credence Barebone, isn't it?"

"Well yes of course, always bringing his little sister around to look at the presses."

"Oh, could you tell me her name, I've forgotten."

Mouse looks concerned through his thick glasses, "Are you feeling alright detective? It's Modesty of course."

"Modesty, right, of course." Percy makes his leave and stops on the porch, hands shaking, afternoon light warm on his face.

Modesty Barebone is four, she is Credence's singular affection to connect him back to New York, the only reason he would have gotten back on that ferry. She is blonde hair and bright eyes and precocious. Intelligent in a way that will get her in trouble and Credence had often thought she would be better off without him there to make Ma so angry all the time.

She has never been on this island without geographical location, this island Percy has never been able to locate on a map and so had never shown Credence it's place, only the maps you could buy at the corner store sold to tourists who didn't know this place didn't exist.

Credence had never held her hand between the stacks of desks.

Except, and here Percy turns his face up, eyes closed, except according to Mouse he had.

He sits in his usual booth and his gaze drops, Queenie looks at him torn up guilt on her sweet face. She fills up his mug and he waits. Hinny joins him for lunch like he does most days, like he did before.

"How long has the school been closed?" Percy scratches at his beard.

"Oh, thirty years I'd say. Haven't had any children about since the lumber mill went under."

"You used to drive a bus didn't you Hinny?"

The old man laughs, "Sure did. You got a case you on?" Hinny is supportive, as he is to everyone who just shows up, as esoteric his memories, as fractured in time, he tries.

Credence's affections are carved into his own bones and Percy has them in his hands, and they are cropping up in a life he could not have lived. "Maybe. My friend from New York, he's gone missing."

Hinny eats his BLT and shrugs, "Went home, probably."

It is what they all say, and it is as empty now as it has ever been. Even Hinny with his compassion and shepherding won't touch the sins beneath the surface. Percy falls silent, he does not finish his food.

Hinny follows him out to the porch and they stand together looking out toward the empty mirror lake. "Perce, you gotta be careful what questions you ask." Hinny pats himself down for his lighter. It is the first they've ever spoken about the unspoken.

Credence had loved him, misguided, Credence had loved Percy, the very lie of his shape, the empty promise. Another notch carved into his rib bones, a man who didn't give as much as he got. "Thanks," Percy steps off the porch, "But I'll find him if it kills me."

Credence knew the truth of that, and it is the repeated whisper on the wind, unheard, a chill in spring air, _ Please don't do something like that again _ . Except he clearly is.

Dusk Falls is comprised of a series of ruins, bones bleached by the sun and time or hidden under the encroaching forest, reclaimed by the hungry vines. When the logging industry went under, for reasons that are vague to the pages of Percy's many notebooks, so too did the community. What remains of it are as sparse as the buildings on main street.

During the spring and summer they have a steady influx of actual tourists, they come up or down or around, taking the ferry over and then taking advantage of the pristine woods to hike and camp in, the fishing, kayaking, and cave diving afforded by equally pristine waters. The other subset, the tourists who come on the ferry lost and wait the day out till they can leave on the morning tide, they are far more numerous. Percy is in the diner so much because like Queenie, they wait, guardians against that which might consume lost travelers. 

Queenie had been strange to begin with, too much understanding in her soft eyes, and she had fallen in love with the place as much as she had the baker who provided for the diner. Opening an actual bakery here was a fool's errand but they carried on, trying to survive off the spring and summer tourism, those who had more in their pockets besides ferry fare and a key.

It isn't always a key though. Sometimes it is a stone, a piece of wallpaper, a lock of hair. Percy has a junk drawer of things people had handed him. Credence had found it one day when the hours had stretched and Percy's late night dependencies had left the man in bed long into the morning. Credence had been an early riser, another thing Percy has on his list about his boy.

Small things, pocket sized things, Credence had not been the first person in three years Percy had taken home, he hadn't been the first person Percy had wanted, hands and teeth hungry beating heart, but he was the first who had curled into him, shower warmth and blood-soaked and told him it was going to be okay.

The school is a ruin when Percy stands outside of it, his hand on the hot rusting metal of his pickup's engine cover. At some point part of the old brick schoolhouse was burned up, some point before Percy had come here. Jack would have a file on it, not that it would help much, nothing Jack has ever helps, and Credence had known, pressing into Percy from the first day, allegiances drawn in the sand. Jack is a remnant as much as the bones of academia stretching into the canopy overhead, Percy cannot depend on him, just as Credence could not have.

He takes his maglite out of the bed of his pickup truck, out of it's secret spot under the tarp. The first week he'd taken Credence's hand in his, bandages and fingers too long and bone-thin, curved hands together around the heavy metal. "You see something come at you and you're in range of the truck you hit it as hard as you can with this." Percy had told him and Credence black eyes wide had nodded, hung on his words like they were law, like Percy was giving decrees from on high, his throne unreachable. Credence had been hung up from the first day, clear as crystal water.

Percy hefts the weight that had become familiar to Credence between his hands, takes the rocky path overgrown, dirty brick stairs, fearless.

The door has already been kicked in, maybe from nature, maybe urban explorers. Percy shines the light in from outside, waits in the entry way for his eyes to adjust. Smoke damage, broken open trophy cases, boarded up windows, trees growing out of the fractured floorboards. His steps are careful, light, he heads to the right, the temperature dropping as smoke damage decreases, as open classrooms stretch to open offices, to locked doors.

Modesty Barebone would have attended school here, as would have Credence, had they lived here when the school was still necessary, before the community dwindled. Credence and his soft smiles, hair falling into his face, studious in his prayer. Hungry, famished, waiting for the world to betray him, not afraid just quietly accepting of his own suffering. Friendless, strange, tender.

Percy balances himself against the crumbling wall and kicks the door labeled  _ Office _ until the hinges give in.

As offices go it's small, there is a dusty desk that has been laid claim to parts of the ceiling caving in. Two chairs face it for students with infractions, dress code violations, problems they bottle up inside. Credence had several thousand, his hands clutched together in offices like this, Ma's anger taken out on his arms and hands, on his back. There is a legacy of the minimum, of paperwork that only exists as a trail in the aftermath, the eventual disappearances, the empty desk that lacks a boy with thin wrists and dark hair.

Percy jerks open rusted filing cabinets and pulls out damaged stacks of paper. It takes twenty treks back and forth to clear out the office and he's out of breath, dizzy, nauseated by the time he's done.

You'll get sick Credence's voice a soft whispered memory implores him, there is a bottle of rye whiskey under the seat. It's illegal as anything, another Percy, no Percival, hair slicked back, Credence had known, his fancy suits, his shiny shoes, his hands stuck into the pockets of his tailored slacks, Credence had known Percival's shape. That man would have arrested him, no excuse for breaking the law.

He would have looked down at drowned Credence, or slit-throat Credence, or strangled Credence apathetic and separate. Percy cannot, whisper on the air, You'll get sick Credence pleads and Percy gets sick, hands shaking where they brace against the side of the truck, cold now from sitting in the shade of these sheltering trees.

He vomits nothing so terrible as his lunch, coffee, then he dry heaves. When there is nothing left he climbs into the front seat of his truck. The woods watch on, door open, as he tries to sleep, to be still, to let the shaking pass enough to drive. The woods guard, wind through trees, abandoned school reclaimed, old roads silent, birdsong and crickets.

It is no easier bringing the papers in from his truck to the empty house. Day cooling quick and drips of amber liquid greeting him as sweet as Credence had. Percy shakes apart, he kneels on the carpet, screen door slamming shut. The shotgun is in the kitchen but he'll never make it there so he lays down on the floor as they had together. Credence's blood is still a stain on the throw rug, it is still a stain on so much of Percy's clothing, it is a stain on Percy too but not a visible one.

"Okay." He whispers, the lock on the screen door flips down, and he closes his eyes at the sound, "I just need to rest." He whispers. Angrily a bottle of spiced rum topples off the coffee table next to his head, thudding dull on the carpet in front of him. "Rest." He repeats.

The evening grows cold, he does not eat. Percy can't cook after all and the kitchen is empty. His barefeet on cool wooden floorboard before the kitchen sink, assured in his presence there, Credence had belonged in the quiet kitchen more than Percy ever had. He had grown to love it there in quick time too, looking out the windows to the still lake, the mountains beyond.

There will be blood there too, and blood inside of Percy, Credence hemorrhaging emotions and evidence of his necessity in Percy's life. Who else would look after him as he fucked up so abysmally?

He can't sleep though, his body won't let him, and any work he does now he will have to repeat later, but he pulls up a stack of papers, sets his back to the couch and begins.

The school as Percy had seen it was built on the grounds of the single room schoolhouse that came before it. Brick edifice erected in 1952 it had stood the test of time until the 1980's when funding had been cut. These are not things found in the stacks of paperwork now cluttering Percy's living room but instead stand up in Percy's own handwriting from a notebook on the bookshelf across from the couch that Credence had thumbed through one evening after work.

By the time funding was cut the school was down to four students and one instructor, and homeschooling took care of the aftermath. The halcyon days of the school had been in the late seventies, when the mill had employed hundreds and hundreds more were then employed to support those who worked in lumber. It was sometime before the school burned but after the mill had closed that the first tourist arrived, or at least the first one that Hinny could recall.

Percy pages through the paperwork. Outside the day grows colder, the night darker, the stars consumed by fog rolling in off the water. The front door remains open as if Percy is daring the night to come in, to take him. The woods have already eaten their fill, they leave him alone.

When eyes look in at him his attention is turned to paperwork, lantern down on the floor next to his bent knees to light a dim circle around him. It will take him months to go through all of these pages.

The first month is cold spells and a lack of appetite. It is throwing out old bottles and new, dumping whiskey down the sink and sweating through his sheets. Queenie pedals up with fear in her heart but he isn't dead and barely complains when she makes up a pot of stew and pushes him into the bathroom. It isn't her job to keep him alive but she's there to do it anyway.

Credence had known his first day how vital Queenie is, but his affection had come late. Percy's own is loyalty and gratitude when she hangs up his laundry in sunny yard. 

When spring is in full swing Percy is sober. It is a terrifying prospect to take the night clear-headed. Credence would have been proud of him, if not worried, Percy stays up till the wee hours of the morning, cicada song and creaking floorboards, windchime whispers keeping secrets.

He is still an awful cook, ramen and chocolate flavoured nutrition shakes, summer comes hot and bitter as it always does. The cabin has no AC so he sits nude in the living room and reads through attendance reports, referrals, and suspensions.

Right before summer break, standing before the principal's deck, Credence is sixteen and pale, not enough sun and too much responsibility on his hunched shoulders. The principle doesn't want him here and Credence does not want to be here either, when he should be at work.

Percy is too far removed, too trapped in the uncomfortable heat to follow Credence through dusty pages. He tries to follow him into the woods, nude and too sober to be this stupid, but he tries and only gets nettle stings and fatigue. The water is cold and clear, welcoming, but it is not Credence. Tactile, receptive Credence.

When Percy is going back up the drive from the lake a thing with three faces each more horrid than the first stands hunched, it's long impossible arms broken backward, it's legs bent at inhuman angles. Percy ignores it and the deer it is gouging into with it's most horrible face, blood and viscera. It's too hot to care and he is exhausted.

There is a memory of Credence waiting for him, lying tangled on the couch together, cool air on their skin. Credence whispers something but it doesn't matter, not really, he is just happy to be here, to be with Percy. Sad that he isn't really there at all.

Percy learns how to make pancakes by trial and error, he follows the recipe written on the back of the box, the heady afternoon sounds of summer drifting in from the open kitchen door, the unlatched screen. There are three notebooks, a map, and a stack of files from the school on the kitchen table behind him. He burns the first two, gets the third right. There is not long for him to celebrate the power cuts abruptly right before the sudden summer storm washes over the cabin, lighting and high winds.

With so many windows open, with the screen door slamming inward, the storm turns the kitchen into a mess of papers. Credence would surely have something to say about the lack of forethought. Or he would just kneel on the wooden floor and help Percy collect the pages, their hands touching by storm lantern light every so often.

Percy collects the pages alone. He had already sorted the school records earlier, they needed to be put down in the cellar with the rest of the paperwork he has sifted through in the last few months but he freezes, hand clutching a file he has read once before already.

Credence Barebone is fifteen, but this name had not been Credence Barebone before. It is now, as if it has always been, and Credence Barebone is fifteen and his paperwork says he's in the vice principal's office on the first day back from winter break with hands that cannot hold a pencil. In the 1970's corporal punishment was still used in schools and what one did to discipline their child at home was none of an instructor's business.

Credence is lost, adrift in these pages, his story is a phantom, he becomes a boy Percy read about. It is maybe madness, hallucination, but it's been too long since Percy has taken a drink. He is sober for the understanding.

The boy in the paperwork, Credence with his lash-marked hands, is told to write lines. It doesn't say what the lines are but Percy flings the paper away from himself, anger and violence with no one to inflict it on but himself.

He sleeps on the couch as he does most nights. The storm stops in the early hours of the morning, just the sound of water dripping off drenched awnings, the windows and front door of the living room open to let in the breeze. Makeshift paperweights of half drained mugs rest down endless papers. Percy's hair shifts off his face, quiet wind, cold.

_ I will respect my elders. _

Credence has always been respectful, it is one of the things written on Percy's list of things essentially Credence.

Nails scratch at porch floorboards, but they won't get in. The punishment and price has been taken and paid, many years ago honestly, a boy sitting in a world too unkind for him to survive in.

In Percy's dream Credence is standing before the award case right in front of the door of the old school. The windows let in great shafts of sunlight and he turns, no longer fifteen, he has been waiting and he smiles nervously his feathered hair brushing sharp cheekbones, the softness of youth starved out of him.

"Detective?" He asks, voice raw, a low whisper. Seventeen and alone, still hopeful, being fed promises instead of food and he drags along in his sneakers against the floorboards, pulled in a current to a man who will be no good for him.

This is a first meeting but it's not right, this isn't how they met, they are not hunched over a booth in the diner with mysteries between them, there is a different mystery here.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me Credence." The use of the first name calms Credence, he slips further into these bones, pushes his hair back and out of his eyes. For half a beat they are almost blue, softer than the summer sky, in a blink they sink back down to black, to remembered registers.

After school the halls are quiet, janitorial staff, sports teams practicing in the new gym. Percy reaches out and braces Credence's elbow and Credence bends toward him further, treading water, eyes too wide, smile too open. "Let me buy you a soda." Percy offers, slipping his hand to the small of Credence's back is the most natural progression and Credence curves into him face up to the sun of this stranger, the implied warmth.

Percy rolls off the couch coughing, his hands dig for purchase against the floorboards, tug at the carpet and his eyes roll. Hands take his face, pull it up, there are no hands no boy, nothing but gray dawn. He blinks and there are tears tracking his face.

As he is shaving Queenie bikes up the drive, gravel terrible traction for the tires of her old bike. "Ready to go?" She is all chipper early morning energy her long blonde hair pulled up into a bun. She is beautiful and faye-like, a balm and a guide.

"Almost." Percy says from the open door to the bathroom, he looks less like a ghost in the mirror. More color in his flesh, sharpness in his eyes, and for the first time in years he can meet his own gaze and hold it. Is he a stranger still, Credence would recognize him anywhere, hard eyes looking down at him in soft surf, cold sand. Love always comes too late, but Percy sinks his teeth into his own lip, cuts himself shaving and laughs softly.

Percy brings a camera, his flashlight, and a hunting knife. Queenie brings a pair of aged garden shears, a length of high-tension nylon cord, and packed lunch. In Percy's pockets are the necessary things too, Credence's key, gauze, alcohol swabs.

"Oh my god, you're learning to cook?!" She claps her excitement, looking over the dishes in the kitchen he needs to do.

"No but Credence bought a box and I-" he pauses, the unfilled words refuse to come, silence is becoming him, as it has been, Queenie understands, she nods sympathy and reaches out to squeeze his arm.

"We'll find him." She believes it, she really does, but this is not what Percy fears. It is the cold dead, the pale body, the boy with glass-eyes looking up at him from wet sand, Credence knows the shape of the man that Percy was and Percy is learning the lies of the town Credence is becoming.

They walk the road back toward town but then take an unmarked lane half a mile in, dipping around the rusty chain that keeps vehicles from driving the overgrown dirt road. The years have been unkind to the gravel path, rain has carried much of the road away, trees have begun to encroach and take up space and storms have felled larger trees that block their way. Percy does not have to help Queenie much, her balance is in many ways better than his own but she is also at least ten years younger than he is and bikes everywhere she needs to go.

Credence had been better at the hiking thing too.

Queenie pauses, standing on a tree trunk, arms outstretched for balance, "How long ago was the retreat shut down?"

Percy has notes, information gathered from the years he's lived here. In another month it will have been four years since he woke up on the ferry. His notes cover every major landmark the locals could recall and the Cougar Paw Retreat was one of the first to close when the lumber mill began to go south. "At least thirty five years now."

Queenie hops down off the log and rubs at her arms affecting a chill despite the heat of the day. They are both dressed for activity, t-shirts and jeans, hiking boots. "I wish someone would just come up here and spruce stuff up y'know?"

Percy shrugs.

Queenie is fearless, she takes the main hall like she owns it, her stance graceful and self possessed. In contrast Percy stands in the broke open doorway, hands shoved into his pockets waiting as if for a bellhop who will never come. He has not lost the bearing and posture of the career that came before Local Problem Solver. It is that sharp self position that had drawn Credence in to begin with and a step forward steps Percy into the footsteps of time.

The hard wood of the dated entry hall is dark but not for any lack of light, the large picture windows that stretch two stories are mostly broken, vines and trees enter with sunlight. A moose's head has grown moldy and sits crooked on the wall over the lobby check in desk. Scattered on the floor alongside pockets of wildflowers and weeds are water damaged tourist pamphlets. When Percy steps forward assured and head held high the sound of his footsteps is wrong but neither Queenie nor Percy hear the click of expensive dress shoes that replaces the thud of hiking boots and when he passes from shade through a great shaft of sunlight the sound is no longer a ghost of a different time.

Queenie uses her garden shears to pick through a mountain of keys behind the concierge desk.

"I suppose this place is beyond fixing up." She laments, eyes tracking the water damage surrounding one great fountain, made of huge river rocks, slabs of gray stone shot through with rust-red.

In Percy's junk drawer are two keys just like the ones Queenie is shifting through. Simple rusted metal and attached by a jumpring to a green triangle with a number upon it. The key in Percy's pocket doesn't belong here, but they do right now, picking through the remnants.

Percy does his own bit of searching and off a wall he pries a framed copy of the building's layout. Breaking the map out reveals minimal water damage and old yellowed paper but readable. Queenie crowds close under the broken skylight to see the map.

Alongside fifty rooms and three suites is a hunting lodge, a grand banquet hall, a restaurant, and two conference rooms. Marked in null-gray are guest barred parts of the retreat. Percy folds the map up and sticks it in his back pocket. Turning on his maglite he nods his head toward the door straight ahead of them. "We'll start in the back rooms. I doubt the key will fit the normal rooms but we'll try the suites after we hit up the staff sections."

They have helped others do this, not that many of them stayed, and sometimes when it seemed like they would they were gone in a few days. Credence would have been another mystery swallowed up by this island lost to time but he is tethered to them, hollowed bones, spilled blood, promises.

Between Queenie and Percy they've found the doors to many keys, and more, cornerstones missing from abandoned houses, window latches, gravestone rubbings. Lost things brought home on the tide, taken back to their roosts.

Percy checks the key carefully against half a dozen locked doors but they remain locked and what doors are not locked they ignore past a cursory glance into dark corners.

Queenie pulls Percy away when they reach the last two doors. Over the soft silence of the ruins the sound of something snuffling into the ground, in waste and wreckage, logic decrees it's probably a boar- a dangerous prospect all on it's own.

They share a look, between them stretches volumes. Not a boar, some other thing, some thing better left alone in it's nest. They turn back carefully and fall into their own footsteps going back.

"Honestly, I think it would be better if they just tore the whole town down, no one belongs here." Percy's voice is church-soft, prayer but the hatred lurking beneath the ambivalence is toxic.

Queenie rubs his arm in a bracing way, "Don't be such a grumpy gus."

Percy snorts his amusement.

"Besides if they tore it down who would the ghosts haunt?" Queeny braces herself against the wall, gardening gloves dragging against peeling wallpaper on the way toward the conference hall.

"I don't believe in ghosts."

Queenie laughs, "Okay then what's the thing that makes the lights in the bathroom of the diner go all funny then?"

"Electrical malfunctions."

She shakes her head and they work together to unblock a door, careful to listen for more sounds but this wing of the retreat seems empty. "What about the lights on the lake?"

"Atmospheric anomalies."

Queenie giggles, "Okay, alright then, mister smarty pants, explain the blood trails all over the sheriff's station last fall."

"Weird shit isn't ghosts." Percy gives one extra hard kick at the rotting ply board barring their entrance and it gives way, carrying his weight with it and he braces himself against the door frame to keep from toppling in head first.

There are no ghosts here, and no Credence, but there are half a dozen desiccated corpses, mummified from dry summers and unkind winters. There are no open windows, no light save what Percy's maglite provides. Each person is dressed in their business finest. Percy turns and shoves Queenie out, her eyes widening in surprise at his quick about face. 

She considers the hallway outside while Percy gets his breath back. "What is it?" She asks, concerned.

"Six bodies, let me get my head together and then I'm going to walk the room." He does not look particularly disturbed by the new discovery. 

"Just check for doors and then we'll put the boards back up." Queenie pats his shoulder and turns, giving up responsibility of the room to Percy all the way. The unspoken is clear, they wouldn't be telling the Sheriff, nor the locals. Why bother, the puzzle pieces would just be swept under the rug again.

He walks the room like a crime scene, a long board room table, stale air, years of dust. Four men and two women if one can judge by clothing, they sit slumped back in their leather office chairs or splayed out on the table. Years of wear have eaten holes through the fine wood they sentry around. Percy's maglite illuminates dried skin and empty eye sockets, thin hair, gaping mouths. There are imprints of papers on the table under decades of dirt and he pushes them around with his knife till the thick layer of dust brushes away enough to make out development paperwork.

Blood splatter, old and as dark tar as coffee under the torch's illumination. He takes a closer look at some of the bodies, recognizes entrance wounds from a .22 millimeter handgun.

He drags one of the papers around further and leans over to get a better look at it. A picture of an old church is clipped to the file and he pries it off, pocketing it.

When he does a full rotation of the room, again facing the door to where Queenie waits with her back to him, he takes the time to consider the doors, or more the lack of them. A singular door leading to a closet, where stacks of paper spill out. When he turns back to the corpses they are all blooming open, flowers too numerous to count claim them.

There is nothing left but dust and vines by the time he rejoins Queenie in the hall. Nothing to report to the sheriff even had they wanted to. 

"No doors. Let's go check out the hunting lodge and then head back, it's getting late." 

"You're sure? We haven't finished this building though." She falls into his steps anyway. 

The temperature is lower here, the air not damp no but soft and chilly. The heavy heat of summer cannot touch them again till they take an emergency exit out into a back courtyard where employees probably took their lunch under decaying awnings. "Do you remember ever seeing a church here?"

Queenie shakes her head. 

Percy frowns and retrieves the photograph from his pocket, holding it out. Together they look at the sepia washed Polaroid. The belltower is thin and spindly, the windows high and arched with beautiful stained glass. In the dim shadows barely visible is a thin wraith of a boy. Spindly arm stretched above to follow the line of the door, the other holding the stick of a mop or broom. 

The breath that leaves Percy's lungs is a painful sound, stolen and twisted up inside. Queenie brushes dust away from the photograph but it does little to clarify the image. 

"He looks almost like Credence." She murmurs.

Percy does not believe in ghosts.

They don't make it to the hunting lodge, a storm threatens on their way through overgrown paths, the weather barring them from further exploration. Queenie pats Percy's arm when they take shelter under a hunting blind abandoned to time. "It couldn't be Credence."

He tells her about the dream, seeing Credence in the school, young, out of time. The paperwork changing on it's own. 

"I think I have a book about reincarnation." She murmurs thoughtfully. 

Percy rests his head against his arm, braced against the side of the blind. "I don't believe in that."

Queenie gentles down his back, damp t-shirt, "Still."

By the time they make it home through gentle rain and finding cover under multiple makeshift shelters they are drenched and pale, the day far later than either had planned to end it. Queenie uses the shower while Percy drips dry, hanging the map of the retreat up to dry in the kitchen. The polaroid he considers, braced over the kitchen table. 

Feathered haircut, brushing the very edge of sharp cheekbones, eyes and lips in shadow completely, face bisected by darkness and distance. Next to the photograph is a new list. 

_ Why I'm Doing This: _

Percy's handwriting is far more careful than it was when he made his first list concerning Credence. Back when sobriety was a tender thing, his hands shaking with the attempt. 

_ He needed me. _

The boy in the photograph is too thin, sharp angles, slim hips, long legs.

_ I need him. _

Trapped in the shadows of a place Percy has never seen, a relic buried, guarded by the blossoming dead, their last secret to spare.

~~_ I love him. _ ~~

Queenie makes them dinner while Percy showers and together they pour over his map of the town after dishes are done trying to pinpoint which empty lots or reclaimed forest might be the resting place of the church in the picture. They find little by way of concrete answers, just a list of suggestions and Queenie knocks out on the couch. 

Percy's brushes her hair off her cheek carefully and for the first night in so long he shuts the blinds and locks the door.

His bed is cold, his bedroom window open, his door locked. The shadows stretch, ink-black like Credence's hands after work at the paper. So few days they had shared, it still burns Percy up inside.

The bed shifts weight, Percy closes his eyes tight. Dreams or darkness, what lies between waking and the death of sleep. Percy's hands clutch at the quilt he lays atop, too hot to bury himself in the grave of comforters.

"Thanks for the soda." Credence's voice is so delicate and small in the buzz of the diner, barely audible over the jukebox. He flushes dark and tips his head forward, long hair a curtain of protection. Oh but it doesn't last, Detective Graves slips his hand forward and under his chin, ducking down till a combination of pressure and hunching meets their gaze.

"Tell me what you remember about Modesty's adoption?"

Credence nods eager to oblige.

Percy wakes to the heady scent of strong coffee and sizzling bacon. He lurches almost turning his ankle getting out of bed, and for the distance it takes him to reach the door, to twist his hands against the lock, Credence is back, Credence was never gone.

Queenie is listening to the radio that's been broken for two years, cooking what's left of his bacon and making pancakes with far more success than Percy's attempts. "I knew the coffee would get you up." She laughs.

Right as Queenie is readying her bike for the trek back into town Jacob bikes up his face puffy and flushed from the heavy ride. He is out of breath for pressing so fast on roads not meant to be taken quick and Queenie dotes on him while Percy leans against his truck bed to eavesdrop not a single shade of guilt in him. 

"Dollbaby your sister's name is Porpentina inn'it?"

Percy drives them into town, Queenie's hands shaking in Jacob's the whole way.

Porpentina Goldstein is pale and wearing the ferryman's coat, her dark hair cut short and unfashionable. She looks up at Queenie and both sisters start to cry in unison, their embrace leaves Scamander's coat on the ground. 

That Newt stuck around at all is interesting but as soon as the sisters begin their reunion both he and his coat vanish again.

Percy goes to get coffee in the diner, sitting in a different booth with view of the window. Hinny comes in and sits next to him. "That's not usual," Percy begins, "Family or friends finding us tourists." The way Percy says tourists drips with sarcasm.

Hinny shrugs and orders a pot roast sandwich.

Queenie had never given up hope, and everyone knew she believed her sister would find her. 

What should have solved some questions only raised further. According to Tina Goldstein her sister had left a week ago to get some notions for her latest sewing project and when she failed to come back and the investigator on the case did less than the bare minimum Tina had withdrawn from all her classes at the police academy and put her half a degree to use.

She had not taken a plane here. She had found Queenie's last known whereabouts, a warehouse on the water, an empty room, a torn open cloth shopping bag, glitter and sequins.

Percy watches them from a booth away as Tina cries and Queenie kisses her sister's cheek, both of them so close. Tina had woken up on the ferry blood in her hair and nothing in her pockets, no key, no piece of masonry, no wallet or ID.

"What do you mean you've been here for months?" Tina challenges, tears in her eyes.

Percy excuses himself and goes to his truck, stalling when he sees Scamander leaning up against the engine cover.

"Can I talk to you?" Newt never meets eyes, starts around like if he looks at someone they'll see into the heart of him and find him wanting. 

"Is this business?" Percy sticks his hands in his pockets, neutral posture.

"Perhaps?" 

"I'm game." Percy follows him back to the ferry, for the first time in years, his steps dragging sticky pulling taffy on the concrete boat ramp, a town jealously staking its claim.

Newt lives on the ferry in a little room next to the engine room. He makes tea with a battered up kettle and moves a nest of duck eggs being incubated under a table lamp off a chair for Percy to sit. There are three cats curled up on his thin bed, a parrot sleeping on a coat rack, and a opossum sitting in a nest of old t-shirts. 

Percy takes the teacup and thanks him but just holds it in his hands. "Something troubling you Scamander?"

"Is she okay?"

Percy shrugs and allows a kitten to climb his jeans and take roost on his knee, "I'd assume in time she will be."

"The last time there was that much blood was with..." Newt turns, hands fretting he takes to changing the water in his snake's enclosure, "The kid from New York."

"Credence." Percy challenges, "How did Credence board the ferry?" He cups his hand around the kitten to keep it from sliding off his knee.

"It had been raining and then it wasn't, I tucked him up on the bench and he was dry, but he hadn't been before, I mean." Newt turns, full of too much energy. Percy scritches the kitten under the chin, ignore his tension.

The ferryman moves like the tide, shifting closer, turning away, "New York is far, not as far as Florida, but you're all so alike. I can tell before you're even woken up usually." Newt scrubs his hands on his pants. "I give the ferry fare, it's part of the agreement."

The horror is when Newt's mouth stitches up like cloth, his eyes widened, hands scrambling against the table. Kittens and birds scatter, tears blurry. Percy jerks his arm back, blade glinting, they fight together, Newt going for himself, Percy going to disarm him.

It's shushing a dog in a bear trap, pulling a swan out of a net, Newt is like his animals. Percy is not good with animals clearly, the shadows keen around them, the water wrecks against the ferry boat.

Newt's lips unseal, he screams and screams, silent, moths dry and dead with age cough up from the stretch of his lips.

He slams the door in Percy's face.

Going back down the ramp Percy's coat is heavier. He stops and sticks his hands in his pockets, three dozen ferry tokens. He footsteps ring metallic on the path back to the diner but the jingle of coins overwrites the impression.

Rain is coming, summer showers, and Percy stops in the street to hold ferry fare in his hand and look down at it. The bell above the diner door chimes as Porpentina and Queenie come to stand on the porch, arguing too distant to hear. Percy's shadow twitches.

Around the diner drags long limbs, broken bones, split open face, blood, blood, a river of blood. The rain hits hard, the wind howls. Queenie has her back to the thing on the far end of the porch, her argument rising in volume, desperate to make her sister understand.

Percy's steps ring hollow, devoured by wet gravel and his own shadow, the maglite is a familiar weight in his hand as he slides around the edge of the truck. It is too early in the day, the only dark superficial from cloud cover for these kinds of hallucinations. They are not nearly deep enough in the woods for dark hearts to split open and spill out their toxic apparitions.

Tina screams, jerks her sister away right in time.

The ferry fare slams into open floral peeling flesh, thrown with the kind of underhand curve one sees in dirty street sports. Percy uses the flashlight like a billy club, hits broken ribs open.

Gellert Grindelwald's terrifying visage turns on him, swipes open his arm. Officer Graves bleeds onto wet gravel and falls to a single bullet, his hair soaks into his face. In another life maybe, but here he is Percy and he jerks back away, arm bleeding sluggish. Droplets hit the ground, soak into his shadow.

The howl is none of them, violent and enraged, what looks like gravel lifts up, like the black tar of the road, shifting around Percy like a manifestation of pain. The gravel falls away, what is left is the tar, bird feather, bone, fish scales, and it tears up wood and pathway. Percy stands in the aftermath still and eyes wide.

The violence takes their attacker down, ripped to shreds, howling wind, hard rain. Queenie sobbing pulls Percy under the porch awning before the hail can bruise him. What is left of shadow and rage drags the empty husk away, into whistling trees. 

Percy tries to run after it, "Credence!" He's shouting, but they won't let him, both sisters holding him back.

Hinny pushes his hat up, "Strange weather we're having." He says demurely.

Tina turns and screams at him, at them, pointing at the trees, at the ground, Percy clamps his hand over her mouth and together he and Queenie drag her back inside.

"No use shouting at the locals, they're living in a different reality I'm afraid." Percy jumps the counter and pours coffee dumping in five sugar packets, by the time he can push it into Tina's hands she's white as a ghost, shaking so bad he helps her drink.

"What was that?" Tina finally asks.

"Weird shit." Percy shrugs.

Queenie shrugs too, she has no better answer for her sister.

"Why did you yell Credence?" Tina asks next, bitten lip and she's drinking on her own now, hands stilling but there is something under the layers.

Queenie cringes, "It's a long story." She looks at Percy, pats his arm, "You think that thing was him?"

"It felt like him, I can't explain it." So little is there that can be explained here. Something hits the door from outside but the storm is too dark, it's impossible to see anything past Hinny's hat and the dim impression of Percy's truck in the drive.

"Please Queenie, tell me what's going on?" Tina sniffles.

Percy drifts off and now Tina is listening, the arguments put away, skepticism only takes you so far. 

He finds the darkest corner of the hallway leading to the bathrooms and the kitchen, presses his hands against the wall and crowds in till there is nothing but darkness in front of him.

Percy is a welcome weight, caging Credence in, keeping him whole, and Credence sucks in desperate lungfuls of oxygen, body shattering and then piecing back together. "Hi." He manages, it slides out of his mouth alongside blood and oil. "Sorry." Comes right after.

"I wasn't... I wasn't sure if this... Credence, please come back." Percy begs him and Credence turns up inside, his body feels like plague, his heart weighs heavy.

"I can't." The memories a broken glass in him but Percy's hands sinking into his hair are precious, he closes his eyes, turns his face up. "Happy birthday." He murmurs, "I think I'm going to miss it."

"No, no, no." Percy coos at him, like Newt Scamander with his animals. 

Credence shoves him away, violent and gentle all at once, he crashes down like waves over rocks, becomes nothing so much as shadow and devastating loneliness again. 

Percy clutches desperate at open air but Credence isn't there to grasp.

When Percy rejoins them his face is wet from dunking it in the sink in the bathroom, as if it were ever necessary, he is soaked from the seasonal storm. Lightning cracks along the water and it draws his gaze. The ferry is pulling away, untimely, Hinny has vanished from the window. "Where did Jacob go?" Percy asks while sliding onto a stool next to Tina.

Queenie is putting things away behind the counter, "He had to go close up the bakery." She looks up and her concern is plain on her face, "You look like you've seen a ghost honey."

"Yeah." Percy grits out, hands twisting against the counter.

"I knew a Credence, it's such a peculiar name, he went missing." Tina says from his side, "I mean, he just, he never missed work and he delivered papers or something. But usually I saw him at the Church coffee shop, they worked it across the street from the academy so I'd go over and then he just wasn't there anymore."

Percy turns halfway toward her, "Delivered papers?"

"Well he always had ink on his hands."

Queenie bustles around, untying her apron, "Percy would you give us a lift home? I have a fresh apple pie in it for you."

"You need not bribe me." He steals a paper off the stand and uses it to protect himself from the rain, not that it helps. The car blanket soaks up much of the rain water but the girls fare less better, tracking mud on the mats.

Queenie tries to lighten the atmosphere by telling her sister about all the nice camping and hiking to be done but Tina is quiet, silent.

Rushing off to get them towels Queenie leaves Percy and her sister in the living room. The day outside is dark, and now is the time, twilight in the heavy rain, when monsters come around. Not the kinds Tina is used to, with human faces and hellish modus operandi but the kind that the woods births, shrieking horrors.

"Why didn't she call me? Why... if it's been months for her why didn't she call? Why didn't she come home?"

Percy sticks his hands into his pockets, stands with stiff back, "Because she was afraid of what memories were waiting for her. Those that stay, we're running from something." He sighs, "You're the first I've seen looking for someone."

"What was that thing on the porch, be real with me."

Percy shrugs but then stops himself, gritting teeth, "What it was I don't know but who it was mimicking I do. It wasn't after you, it was looking for me, it's always looking for me. The woods take on different faces. But this is all conjecture, observation."

"What is going on here?"

"I've been trying to figure that out for a long time." He nods his head to her, "Can you tell me what Credence looked like?"

She describes a youthful teen with soulful eyes, pale skin, and the bearing of someone made for elegance and lashed into cowering shapes. Or she gives a perfunctory explanation of a teenager in need of shelter with little by way of friendship or love in his life. Credence would have described himself less charitably, but the connections are made just the same.

"Queenie won't remember the day she went missing, you can ask her again and again but she'll never be able to recall it. Likewise you can ask the townspeople here about the shit we've seen and you'll get nothing from them."

"This is impossible." Tina argues.

Percy shrugs, "You'll learn."

Queenie gives him the pie and Percy leaves the sisters to reconnect. The drive is inky darkness illuminated by lightning and the high beams. At home Percy sits in the darkened kitchen and eats pie for dinner scribbling down events by lantern light.

The ferryman's added information, fear and the flight across dark water. Untimely in a way never experienced before. The attack by and on the creature. Credence's apparition in the hallway.

Percy drops his pencil and stands pacing. Lowers the oil on the lantern and goes to lay on the couch in the empty living room.

"Almost four years and you're what's going to make me talk to myself like I've finally fucking lost it." Percy grits through clenched teeth. The room stays silent.

"I fucked up, I fucked up and I pushed you away because I didn't know what to do with you, I didn't know because you're more than I ever could have had and more than I ever deserved and you were hurting and I didn't want to be another wound to you."

There is nothing but the howl of wind through the trees, the pounding rain.

"Credence I miss you. I'm not going to stop till I find you."

The shadows smile, not that Percy can see, he doesn't have the right eyes.

"God damn it." Percy turns, exhaustion in the tense line of his spine. The shadows kiss and nip, lick along impressions of bone, but Percy cannot feel him, as much as Credence is hungry for it, for recognition. Shadows have no weight.

Tina stays and the ferry doesn't come back so it doesn't matter either way. The locals don't seem to notice and shipments show up in shops and tourists show up like ghosts, but no more of the  _ tourists _ like Percy and Queenie, like Tina and Credence. Percy has a notebook filled with theories about this beside all the other notebooks. 

He is giving Tina a ride into town to pick up groceries at the corner store when the attendant, Chloe Helena rings up his new notebooks. "When are you ever gonna let us read your book?"

"Hu?" Percy asks, pushing a pencil behind his ear.

"All these notebooks, you gotta be writing a book right?"

Tina puts her groceries on the counter, bread, a box of candles, a packet of facial wipes, three spiral notebooks.

Chloe's eyes get big, "Are you a writer too?"

Percy is infinitely amused, "No, we're just ex-cops."

Outside Tina struggles to keep up with him on the way to his parking spot in front of the diner. "I never graduated sir, I was still in training." She explains, guilt lacing her tone. Queenie has obviously told her what Percy did before he washed up here.

"Are you planning on going back without her?" Percy puts his bag in the bed of the truck, looks at Tina, short, barely coming a head above the bed.

"She's happy here and I'm not sure anymore what's waiting for me." Tina blows her hair out of her face, "I don't know. Queenie was always the one who was gonna find a man for herself and settle down, that's what she wanted. I just wanted to make the world better."

"You could start here." Percy slides into the truck and Tina scrambles after him.

"Tell me about your Credence?" 

So Percy does, he tells her about Credence's shadowed existence, his bleeding hands, his open wounds, he tells her about his quiet earnest helpfulness. His intellect and open eyes.

"So you were in love." Tina’s words stir the shadows and she’s right but Percy doesn’t admit to it.

"Let me give you some advice for this place, you've got good instincts Porpentina, a good gut. You follow that, if something feels wrong get yourself out, look at it from a different angle. Don't sink your teeth into something and hunt it like a dog and disregard what your instincts are telling you."

"That isn't very logical though."

"These woods don't give a fuck about logic."

The sisters have Percy stay for dinner and he takes a walk afterward, summer heat cooling. But he has always been guilty of not following that advice, of taking the hunt to heart and tracking with single minded determination.

Tina joins him shortly, catching up to him with running shoes on and an open expression. "What else can you tell me about the woods?"

These are lessons Credence never got, hadn't been around long enough to learn. Percy's shadow stretches in the dusk of summer, sunset soft, blurred edges like smoke. The darkness listens attentively.

"If you hear someone calling your name and they've got no business being in the forest at that time of day you ignore it and go the opposite way."

"These are like fairy stories, seriously?" Tina scoffs, but when he doesn't show humor she grows serious again, "I can see why Queenie is so good at fitting in here, she's always believed in ghosts and premonitions. I'm not good at superstitions."

"You get used to it or you go off the deep end." Percy stops, it's too late to go this far, too many shadows that cannot all be Credence. Percy's own shadow trembles under dim light, rough under Percy's shoes. "Head on back." Too late to go on with Tina at least.

"Queenie told me to bring you in." Tina straightens her back, jaw set.

Percy frowns and looks to the trees bordering the path, then back to Tina, "Fine." His shadow goes smooth.

Percy takes more walks with Tina, shares more meals with the sisters. Tracks days by the calendar in his kitchen and the growing words on empty pages. He solves problems and talks to the darkness. The daylight grows longer, the woods louder.

When the leaves are turning Percy buys himself a bottle of whiskey and a pistol and takes off with his backpack deep into the woods. There is the large lake he lives off but then of course there is the river famous for the waterfall Dusk Falls takes it's name from. He hikes up, starting early in the day.

The falls crash loud and impossible, he takes pictures and pokes his nose into the abandoned cabins that dot the river but when he tries doors they remain locked.

He camps far enough from the falls to have the water be a murmur, but close enough to the river to hear it's rush. His tent is for one person and his sleeping bag isn't graded for this last in the year. He starts a fire before setting into the bottle and he finishes it before throwing the glass into the fire. "It's my fucking birthday I'll drink if I want." His tone scolds nothing, late day, trees and moonlight.

Percy digs in his bag, "I'm not sure if it should be darker." He muses aloud, his shadow flickers sharp and worried, firelight isn't a steady source of substance. Gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol go on the rock he'd been sitting on.

When he unstraps his hunting knife from his belt the sound of his footprints is devoured, flitting shadows, dread. "Fairy stories. Tina gave me the idea you know, and you weren't solid till, well. I have a theory, shall we test it?" Percy asks. Credence doesn't want to test it.

The howl rips out of Credence as Percy drags the knife ragged over his open palm. He is feather and blood, Percy's hot against him, shadow sharp. "What are you doing?!" He shouts, corporeal, worried and static edges.

Percy grabs him with his bleeding hand, pulls him close whiskey and desperation, and Credence's arms go tight around him, clawed hands, oil and ink sinking into Percy's plaid shirt. "It's my birthday you're not allowed to miss it." Percy mumbles into his hair.

They sink to the ground, Percy taking most of Credence's slight weight, as much of it as there is, he is still mostly shadow and hollow bones. Less reality and more memories given solid shape. He's never felt dead so much, and he doesn't now, but he does feel like a ghost.

Percy puts his face against the slope of his shoulder and Credence holds to him tighter. "I can't stay." He says and they both know, Percy's blood slowing sluggish, it swipes against Credence's cheek when Percy moves to take his face between his palms. "I'm sorry I can't stay."

"Just let me know your face again, I-" Percy trips over his words, "I've missed you so much."

Credence sighs, it hurts worse than he imagined, he doesn't know what the distance of this journey will be, doesn't know all the turns it's going to take. But these words and the ones written about him and the ones stolen out of the mouth of strangers, these are all more than he ever could have hoped for.

To think he'd not wanted this, that it had been too soon, that he didn't think he was ready, to think that so little time had passed and now he can't think of anything he wants more than this, the pain of his beating heart. Wants nothing more than he wants to stay. "We're going to figure everything out." Credence tentatively presses forward, close enough to nudge his nose against Percy's jaw. "Just like you wanted."

"I want you here with me, I want you to stay." Percy is so much more, thick and concrete, real in a way that Credence just isn't anymore, and has certainly never felt himself to be even when he wasn't this creature.

"I can't." Credence wonders, tilts his head, eyes half closed, a prompt with lips parted but Percy doesn't kiss him, he just holds on tighter. Credence falls to shadow, broken glass cascading from Percy's embrace, reforming under fallen leaves and firelight.

Percy presses both hands to the forest floor and Credence places open mouth kisses to the torn flesh, healed over like new saplings. Percy doesn't know his hunger, doesn't understand his devotion, but that's fine. It hurts but it's fine.

Percy rolls over to look up at the smoke twisting up into the night sky, and what remnant of strength there is to Credence isn't human, none of him is really human anymore, but the coils to slip shadow and ink, blade sharp around Percy are as human an embrace he can manage.

Grass and dead leaves, darkness, and Percy snorts his amusement, raises his hand to scrub at his face. "My little ghost." He speaks in bitter tones but not anger.

Credence lulls him to sleep, forest of weight, keeping bugs and other pests away.

The Credence here is a skittery thing, as he has always been, his limbs too long, his back too straight for Ma's approval. In the dappled sunlight he bends toward the Detective, their path to walk a semi-neglected hiking trail. Fine shoes and Credence's sneakers, hardly good for weathering the trail but the man, Detective Graves, is assured in his footing and even balanced Credence a few times, steady hand at his elbow.

"We got Modesty when she was very small from a home in New York."

"Are you from New York too Credence?"

He nods, "I don't remember it very much."

"How many children has your mother taken in over the years?"

"Oh," Credence bites his lip, "Ten, or eleven. Modesty was the last though. And it's just her, Chastity, and me now. Chastity's graduated and working up at the mill."

"Not gone to college?"

Credence shifts again, knotted path tripping him up and as easy as breathing Detective Graves steadies him, gentle pressure against bruises and cuts he has no understanding of but that burn into Credence from the kindness. "We don't have the money for that."

"Ah."

"Ma didn't take us with her when she went to get Modesty, she always went alone anyway, and Chastity watched me and Faith when she was gone."

"Faith?" Detective Graves prompts and helps him balance around a fallen tree barring the path. They are further in the thick of the woods now, the heart of it comforting Credence. Here amidst the trees Ma wouldn't come, too fretful, too superstitious, he was always sent to fetch firewood, sent to repent, sent in general and he had grown tall like the pines.

"Faith left last year as soon as she turned eighteen."

"I'd like to talk to you about why I'm asking you these questions."

Credence bites his lip, "You think Ma stole Modesty."

Detective Graves looks at him, really considers him for the first time in a way that makes Credence's stomach clench up, "Yes, I do. And her other children too, even you. Modesty fits the description of a little girl that went missing in New York five years ago. Her family hired me on when the police closed her case."

Credence thinks of Chastity and himself, what would happen if Ma went to prison or worse if he conspired against her and this girl isn't his Modesty, if Ma found out what he'd done. There is no running for him like there was for Faith. His face isn't pretty enough to get him into pictures or just into someone's purse, he isn't smart and he isn't strong. Faith had been both, but Faith had also been selfish. If he does this and Ma is innocent then they'll all suffer for his transgressions.

"I should go home, it's getting late and I have to sort the hymnals."

Detective Graves lets him go and wanders the woods a little longer, hands in his pockets, quiet and contemplative. The path north is a six mile track to the base of the falls and it is here that he finds the body, rotting open to the sky, weeds and ruin.

Officer Graves knows this process, questions from the local police, the coroner's observations, the coffee and late night discussion in the small sheriff station. Park rangers and paperwork. He is still mired in it when he wakes up, night air gone sharply cold.

Percy sits up and scrubs at his face again, crawls over the ground to climb into his tent, night dew and moonlight glistening on his dirty clothes. "That was, what, about seventy yards away from here?"

Credence can't respond, Percy rubs his cheek on his bag, it's not a very good pillow. "So, a body, a boy, a kidnapping. It's a start."

It is a start, hiking back in the next day Percy assures Queenie and Tina he survived another year before heading to the Sheriff's station. Jack doesn't look happy to see him, but Jack never does.

Jack lets him into the records room, cup of coffee in one hand. He doesn't say how this is illegal or how Percy doesn't belong, "It's a cold case, my predecessor never solved it. A lot of them like that, before everything quieted down. I know you solve problems but I doubt you're going to find the answers to anything in these cabinets, the people involved are long gone."

Percy cards through the folders, thumbing along old paperwork, tracking back the years. "But you remember it?"

Jack shrugs, "I hadn't been born yet but it was urban legend by the time the mill went under. Four girls show up dead and a chain of suicides to follow? Kind of works into the local color."

"And yet it's the first I've heard of it." Percy shifts out an armful of folders.

"Better things to talk about." Jack leaves him in the back room and Percy flicks through files as the hours stretch on.

It's too much information, too much to sort in one afternoon or even one day and Percy steps out of the back room to find Jack, sitting with his feet up watching a VHS recording of a 90's sitcom, the tracking lines traveling over the screen from repeated viewings. "You know," Percy leans his hip against the desk the television is sat upon arms crossed, "They invented DVD players."

Jack shrugs, "Yeah sure take them."

"You know that's illegal, letting me take them, I just want to make sure you know that."

A sigh, drawn, eyes pinched, Jack puts his hand to his nose, "Even when I'm letting you do what you want you're a pain in the ass Graves. Go away."

Percy steals a box that formerly held paper cups and pushes the files into it. He has the forethought to pick up dinner from the diner and if he could have listened to the wind in the trees, the sound of his own footsteps, the darkness static sharp that followed in his wake he would have gotten a few days of food instead of just dinner.

Credence is in these papers too, a cross-section of a boy and a church, a missing life, there are only more questions. The shadows don't have the answers.

Winter comes sudden, deep fall dropping to frozen chill overnight, Percy gets quilts down from the closet but the dark doesn't take the cold well. His shadow shivers under him the morning of the first snow. Percy stands on the porch with the throw from the couch over his shoulders cup of coffee in one hand, folder in the other. 

Queenie pauses, and for half a second she can see Credence behind him, arms wrapped around Percy's waist, chin on a broad shoulder, reading along with him. When she blinks Credence is shadow again.

"I think I found the church!" She calls out, basket of banana muffins in her hand. They leave one on the fenceline for the woods before Percy drives her back into town.

While Percy has been pouring over autopsy reports and crime scene photography, Queenie and Tina have been burying themselves in old newspapers, historical society records, and religious pamphlets hoarded by the library. 

Ultimately it's Tina who finds the written description of The Truth of God Ministry in a bleached out tourist flyer. While the legacy of the church was a rich vein running through the written history of the town, written descriptions containing an explanation on how to get to the church were impossible to find. 

Tina leads, fearless and stamping feet, dressed in a giant orange cold weather jacket she quickly outpaces Queenie and Percy.

Queenie leans in, her voice lowered, "Newt showed back up."

"The ferry?"

She shakes her head, "No and he looked terrible, Jacob has taken him in but there wasn't enough room for all the animals above the bakery so we're looking after his cats for now. He won't tell us what happened."

"He probably can't, I'll go by and see-"

"Hey!" Tina shouts excitement, bouncing on her hiking boots, she gestures wildly to a overgrown expanse of woods, show cover and dormant flora makes it hard to see the foundation stone. 

Percy's hand shakes holding up the photograph of the church and the stone steps barely visible line up perfectly. "Good job Porpentina." His praise causes her to flush and smile nervously.

Queenie pokes around the edges of the path for brick or wood, while Tina pushes winter foliage away from the cornerstones to look for some better evidence than just impressions of steps. 

Percy takes the steps carefully, shoes sinking into the snow building on old stone. 

The second he steps onto what would have been the entryway the world around him melts away, abrupt and with a sharpness like a car crash he is standing in the doorway of a darkened church. The photograph is gone, and the rest of him too, replaced with a three piece suit, a well-cut overcoat.

Credence is scrubbing the floorboard by oil light, it is dark, well past dinner, and he had been here for hours now, a punishment for being late in from school again. His hands sting every time he dips them into the bucket. He should have the door closed but with it open on a quiet night like this he can hear the music coming up from Mrs. Low's house as she practices for sunday's service.

"Shouldn't you be in bed?" It isn't right for a minute, there is something wrong, shadows stretch, the world goes fuzzy, but Credence looks up and it's Detective Graves quiet as the dead in the doorway. It's been a week and a half since Credence had run away from him but there hasn't been a day since when he's not felt guilty about his own cowardice.

"You shouldn't be here." Credence whispers, scrubs at the floor harder, applying himself to the task.

Percy pauses, incongruent, the shadows tug at him, no he shouldn't be, but Detective Graves steps forward, leaving hiking boots and snow behind, his steps sound sharp and precise on the wooden floor, perfect acoustics. 

Credence thinks he's never heard something sound so fine, so rich.

"Just pretend I'm not here."

Credence tries, he really does, but the man slips past him soft, the edge of his coat brushing Credence's arm and it's too much so he pushes to his feet and follows him along the pews silent and hunched in on himself. Ma wouldn't be checking on him anyway, she's asleep by now.

The detective slides a folded piece of fabric out of his pocket when they're standing in front of Ma's office. "You don't have the keys do you?"

Credence shakes his head, wide-eyes and curiosity as the fabric is folded open, delicate metal tools glinting in the moonlight from the stained glass windows. "That's illegal."

Detective Graves smiles at him, eyes sharp and glinting, "You're here, tell me now, without keys how are you supposed to get into the office? I'm helping a friend out." When the detective reaches out and swipes his thumb against Credence's cheek it's all but over for him. Credence nods, mouth dry and torn open palms burning as his hands clutch his jacket sleeves.

Credence stands in the open door, terror and torment, hunger and something he isn't sure of, but he knows it's trouble. This man is trouble.

"Just be a good boy and stay there and keep watch on the front door for me." Detective Graves directs him and Credence finds it is the easiest thing in the world to follow these directions, he is not complicit in this, the answers are not coming from his lips, he's just standing in an empty hallway. Not hard at all.

Detective Graves is in darkness, swathed in secrecy and all Credence can hear is the subtle click of a shutter and the momentary blindness of a flash going off.

When the door is closed and locked again Detective Graves leans into him and squeezes his shoulder. To Credence this is the gentlest touch he has received in hours, the softest from someone other than Modesty he has received in days. It takes his breath away and he can barely focus on remembering to breathe when Detective Graves presses in even closer, a half embrace, his lips hot on Credence's ear.

He says something but Percy doesn't remember, there are hands on him, pulling, tugging, a voice screaming run, run, RUN. This is a different place, overgrown, the woods a violence against Percy, Credence is lost to this new place, only one hope he turns and pushes Percy as hard as he can.

Percy falls backwards off the stairs, lands in loosely packed snow, coughing, wet, cold.

"Percy!" Queenie shouts, sliding to her knees next to him. "Tina! He's here!"

Tina stomps through the snow, pale faced and worried but she looks so relieved, a mirror of her sister in that moment.

"What happened?" Percy is winded, but mostly from falling off the stairs, not that it was a long drop.

"You vanished." Queenie gestures toward the ruined church, "One minute you're right there and then you're gone and then poof, there you are again!"

Tina drives them back to the cabin when Percy can barely walk a straight line on the way home. He refuses a trip to the clinic and also to have one of them stay with him, taking refuge in a hot soak. When his hands sink into the water blood washes off his skin. There is nothing to have caused it, no cuts, no bruises.

His shadow does not move on it's own, it is soft and stationary till he moves himself and then it follows with him. The edges are not too sharp and there are no bared teeth and desperation in the lines of it.

Percy buries his face in his clean hands, he doesn't cry but he breaks along hairline cracks.

"Give him back to me." But Credence has been gone a long time now, Percy's plea is unanswered.

The dreams stop for a time, too much paperwork, too much coffee, too much in general. Percy visits Newt sometime in December, the man living out of Jacob's livingroom is surrounded by animals and books, another mistaken writer for Chloe to ply with questions if the amount of spiral notebooks is any indication of Newt's interests. But maybe this one is actually writing a book, there are diagrams of strange organic shapes sketched onto the page open next to a cup of tea gone cold.

"Why did you shove all those ferry tokens in my pockets if the ferry isn't coming back?"

Newt shrugs, "Tina said you went missing. For a minute. I think I've been missing for years."

Percy listens to him but what comes out of Newt is nonsense or animal care tips. He is patient but Newt sounds as lost as any of them.

When spring thaw begins Percy wakes to a weight over him, a hand over his mouth, slender legs straddling his own, dark eyes look down at him and Credence is smiling triumphant and whole, if not a little damaged. His hair is longer, down to his shoulders, his lips chapped and bitten open, he is still a mess of open wounds, a boy more pain than anything else, but he is whole, not a dream.

Percy wraps him up in his arms, pulls him down into the thick quilt covers and holds him so tight Credence gasps with the pleasure of compressed pain. "Credence." Percy murmurs it like a prayer, an adulation, like he's saying hallelujah, and finally Credence is home.


	3. Ink and Smoke Part One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they have earned their comfort

_ The Second Year, Spring _

 

They spend the morning tangled in bed, nothing so inappropriate as a kiss but Credence curls into Percy like he's afraid he'll fade away if he isn't moored down by the weight of Percy's arms. When the morning breaks to noon and hunger takes hold Credence curls into him, stomach cramping. A gasp of pain and Percy pulls him along, unfolds him, quiet coaxing words, draws him from their nest.

Percy demonstrates his dedication to pancake making while Credence clings to him from behind. It isn't as awkward as it should be but Credence has been his shadow for longer than he's been whole and in his life.

In time though perhaps he is too much, too ungainly, Percy pushes him into a chair, careful and caring, but the gratitude of the morning is gone, Credence can feel it dwindle between them, a light like hope flickering weak. "Eat up okay? I'm gonna find you a change of clothes."

Credence doesn't want him to go, fear and more spinning up, suffocating. He has been living almost a year as a shadow, constantly underfoot, the embrace of his arms and open lips where light throws contrast. In the cold spring morning he sits hunched over the plate, eyes shut tight, listening to weight shift on boards and remembers, struggles to contain himself as flesh and bone.

It's a miracle he's still there when Percy comes back. "Hey they're fine, I can make pancakes okay? Eat up, then we'll get you in the shower."

Credence holds the fork and it's too cold in his freezing hands, and he looks up at Percy and tries to find the mirror to his desperation there. He remembers a man angry at the world, begging the woods to bring Credence back. That's not the person urging him to eat.

"Together?" Credence whispers, "I'd like, together?"

Percy puts the clothing down on the table. "I don't think that would be a good idea."

Credence feels the thread falling away from him, "I think I have a week like this maybe." He tries not to sound gutted open, "For now, and I don't know when I'll be back again."

"What?" Percy steps forward, hands clenched. "Where are you even going, what's happening to you? How do I stop it?"

Credence has no answers for him, nothing that would make sense. "I just, it's so little time, I just-" and Percy shushes him, gentle hands, pushing his dirty hair back, pine needles and bird nesting. He wants Percy to kiss him, to hold him in the shower, to take him back to bed. A year, and so many lessons between them and yet what does he have but this.

"It's okay. We'll make the most of it." Percy does kiss him, but it's to his temple and Credence wants to scream.

Percy watches over him till he eats and then he lifts him up, cradled in his arms, and Credence knows he is too light, more smoke and shadow than flesh and bone.

"I don't want to be the one who hurts you." Percy undresses him and Credence shakes apart, and they've been here but it's him pressed to the wall now and it's him being crowded into and pulled under the spray.

"You won't, you'd never." Credence whispers when Percy draws away, cleans the woods from open wounds and Credence watches blood and dirt wash away, blurred edges going straight and stiff under the water and Percy's hands. "I thought, you wanted me." To stay, to come back, to keep.

"You're still a kid Credence."

Credence closes his eyes tight, he's not even really human anymore, he's woodsmoke over dark water, he is need and inelegant hunger, sharp angles and spilled blood.

Percy isn't hungry when he looks at him, he is desperate but not hungry, not like he'd been before spring had burned into summer, before Credence had fallen to shadow. He is grateful, he looks at Credence like something to save but the need in him, the dark loneliness doesn't match. Credence wants, and his want isn't matched.

"I'm not." He whispers but Percy just washes his hair for him.

"Do you, do you have any tender feelings for me?" Credence asks, managing finally when his hair is brushed back, his face scrubbed, his arms clean. 

"Credence I would do anything for you, I can't do what you want me to do though. Anything else."

Credence cringes, turns inward, he is less concrete, less whole, Percy takes him by the arms under the heavy spray, pulls him close, "No, shh." He gentles Credence but it feels so hollow, so empty. "I want you so bad I could go blind with it." The sudden heat, the frustration, the sheer longing in Percy's tone is jarring in comparison. Credence looks up at him and Percy is so heated, his eyes so dark, "Anything else." He promises.

"L-let's go back to bed. I want to be close to you." Credence whispers and Percy smiles at him.

"Of course sweetheart."

Credence is exhausted, as if just being whole, just moving his body around drains him to the very core. Percy brushes his hair back, intertwined with him, brings him close to share his warmth and Credence drifts in and out of sleep.

He also drifts in and out of cohesion, Percy struggling sometimes to drag him back into being. When the evening is beginning Percy brings him out of sleep and shadow, and Credence feels his own weight settle into the bed. 

"Hungry?" Percy asks.

Credence nods, he feels like an empty pit, ravenous, he's afraid to open his mouth because what sound waiting to come out isn't human. Percy draws him up, grasps his wrist gently in the strength of his hand and pulls him toward the kitchen. Credence's borrowed sweatpants too baggy around his thin colt-like legs.

Percy pushes him into a seat and goes about making a plate of sandwiches.

Credence tests himself, opening his mouth a little, the sound escapes but it's nothing but a sigh, soft. He has settled into this shape again, at least for now, remembered how to be.

They eat outside on the porch, which is Percy's idea but it's a good one because here where Credence can hear the trees and the water over sharp rocks it is easier to breathe by far. Percy sets the plate down and then pulls Credence into his lap and that satisfies another part of Credence, the one that is the painful labor of his lungs. A contradiction in parts but he sacrifices to be here.

Ham and cheese sandwiches that taste foreign on his tongue and hot tea that fills him up and brings warmth again. Food tastes strange, something he hadn't noticed during late breakfast, too caught up in his crisis of self.

Percy presses his face to the back of Credence's neck and just rests there breathing him in and Credence knows explicitly how that feels, nights and nights spent reassuring himself Percy was alive and not a memory, not a ghost. This is his reality, aching bones, rapturous heart singing joy at the heat against his cold skin.

"I know I should tell Queenie you're back but I," Percy nudges his nose into Credence's hair gently, just at the top of his spine, and Credence's head drops to enable him in this, eyes half shut, "I just want you to myself tonight."

Credence cannot argue, nor would he, his sentiments are very much the same.

When sandwiches are gone and the night is the dull thrum of the forest's pulse in Credence's veins, the voice in the trees, he leans back against Percy and is chained down by physicality. Strong embrace, shared heat, Percy puts his chin on Credence's shoulder, words a vibration against the side of his neck.

"You are here, aren't you?" Percy asks, and Credence wonders how he could have ever doubted the need hiding under the surface. Self doubt ultimately, and dreams of memories that aren't all his.

"I am." He never really left though, just faded to shadow, stepped on, ignored, as he'd always been, except Percy isn't good at ignoring injustices.

Percy presses his lips to Credence's neck, above stretched out hemming, the careful attention burns through Credence, settles into him. The woods go still in his blood, his breath shutters out with the whistling through the trees. It's spring but it's still snowing and it comes down now, gentle flakes in the dark. Credence can barely feel the cold but he's made of darker things these days, things that don't feel the chill like Percy must.

"We should go back inside." Credence draws away, understanding really, he knows Percy is a good man, a better man than the ones who came before who left their mark on Credence and Percy lays down shallow affection but Credence's blood is cold and he needs to be burnt up and consumed, he needs things Percy can't give him, too afraid, too brittle.

They're both the brittle one when Percy draws him back down, lifts him easy weight and care. "Bed?" His voice sounds so strained to Credence, heartbreaking, and how could he think Percy cared so little for him when he sounded like this now, when he held him like Credence is the most precious thing in his life.

"Please." Credence nods.

The bed is too soft in contrast to hard planes and heavy muscle and Credence's head drops back against the pillows and then Percy is over him, heat and weight and a sound shivers out of the sharp cage of his ribs out of the flittery pain of his aching lungs like a broken aviary letting its prisoners out and it isn't human this sound, pressed from him by the decadent pressure of Percy settling himself like protection over him. An inhuman keen, not animal, but a sweet sound, warm and the chitter of winged things in dark trees, of deep water, smoke in a dark room, a beak on dull glass.

Percy presses soft chaste kisses along the column of his throat and Credence cannot help it, the sounds pool out of him, unspun like woolen yarn from his tight coiled form. There is nothing urgent here, it is slow and methodical, it is everything. All the sacrifice, all the pain of his brittle bones, his paper-thin skin, his torn open flesh is worth it to feel Percy hot blood and heavy muscle weighing him down into reality. Large hands, careful open palms dragging against his skin, pushing borrowed clothing out of the way.

Every movement of this sweet man above him drips devotion like holy water, like sacrament, like communion over Credence's skin. It is the most sensual, sexual, physical moment of his entire life. Gentle soft kisses on his throat, jaw, collarbones, hands putting claiming pressure on his wrists, arms, over the cold blood torn to the surface.

"Percy, Percy, Percy," Please, please, please, Credence writhes, and his words blur, his very essence blurs, Percy doesn't kiss him on the lips, brushes a kiss to the edge of them, catches Credence's face between his hands, "Percy." Credence trills, all of his sharp corners are dulled down, a knife ground out against river rocks.

"I've got you." Percy promises.

Credence nods because he does feel safe, feels bracketed, but his body is coming apart at the seams, bones loose in their joints and blood slick in his throat. He gurgles it up, sobs and Percy draws back, turns Credence till he's on his side, till he's tucked up into Percy, slight weight and shivers.

"No, no, it was good, it was good I want that again, please, please." Credence trills, his teeth cut into his tongue, he closes his eyes on a sob. 

Percy brushes his hair back, kisses his temple, holds him tight to his chest. "It's okay, just breathe, this will be good too."

Credence believes him, swallows down the messy mix of his own trauma, the edges of him get sharp again, clear and physical, less mess in all. Percy holds his face again and kisses the corners of his lips where smiles hide on other people but Credence can't remember how to make them right now so it's just where his sorrow lives, drawn out breathless from him to be healed by Percy's warm attention. "God Credence," and Percy shudders, eyes nearly closed and blown out black, glinting glimmer in the dark, "I've missed you so much."

Credence knows.

They sleep again, entangled, soft touches and softer kisses, and Credence wakes to early dawn. Percy is sitting up in bed with his hand gently carding through Credence's hair, overly long but clean now, tangles unwound by Percy's gentle touch. Percy isn't looking at him, eyes closed but when Credence moves, pressing his cheek to warm palm, Percy looks down at him. "So a week?"

"Maybe less or more." Credence brushes his lips against Percy's palm, and then his wrist, captures his hand in his own frail ones, finds strength from the dark wood the gentle water in his spindly limbs. He nips first, laps at a throbbing pulse. His breathing goes shallow when Percy's does.

"Why now? Why have the strength now?" Percy drags his fingers against Credence's cheek so he kisses them too, reverent.

"Memories. Not mine, but something fond, heavy."

"So it has nothing to do with us?"

Credence shakes his head, "It never did."

"Then why is this fucking town taking you from me, putting you in places you don't have any business being?" Percy's hand shakes so Credence lets it go, wriggles till he's wrapped around Percy like an oversized cat, fond.

"This town has no business being." Credence reminds him and Percy snorts his amusement.

Credence is the one to pull them out of bed, loose limbs entangled, into the kitchen where he kisses Percy on the cheek and then pushes him toward the counter, "Show me again how you make pancakes."

Percy laughs but he does it, batter in the bowl, nudging into Credence who pushes himself to sit up on the counter. "It would have been easier with internet, all those Youtube guides."

Credence draws his knees up to his chest, owl-like on his perch. "What would make you want to go back?"

Percy burns the first pancake, cursing he pushes it off onto the plate, Credence picks it up, too hot, but he eats it anyway. Looking at him too long, Percy almost burns the second pancake too but catches himself, "I don't know, figuring this place out, knowing there's something to go back to."

"Who says we have to go back to New York?" Credence remembers the day he threw his ferry fare in the lake but he also remembers the jar of coins Percy has on the top shelf in his closet and the ones Credence had choked up alongside dark tar and poison in the depths of the forest, toxins expelled.

"No ferry left to take us anyway." Percy shrugs.

Percy finishes the pancakes and puts them on the table, before Credence can jump down there are arms around his waist, Percy tugs him forward and off, and Credence wraps his legs around a wide waist, arms around Percy's shoulders. He is a mess of pain but the closeness, it soothes the ache in his bones, it warms him all the way through when Percy smiles up at him, holds him tight. "Would you leave with me if I left? Could you?" Percy asks like any answer won't be painful, but they all are.

"I don't know." Credence says softly, "I don't want you to leave me."

"Then I won't." Percy sits, strength putting a keen in Credence's chest at the display. Credence folds into his lap, legs braced astride his hips and Percy feeds him, syrup sticky on Credence's lips, Percy's gaze sticking there too. "We haven't solved the mystery yet anyway."

Credence doesn't care about the mystery, but that's why he's here anyway isn't it, why he's still here, this painful ghost of torn flesh and smoke, coughing up ink in the woods.

Percy feeds him the whole stack, eight pancakes before Credence realizes they're gone and he has apologies on his tongue when Percy pulls him in and laps a line against his lips and Credence's breath pools in his chest like birds and his body goes rigid. He's hungry again, famished with it, pulse gone quick and fast. Percy groans against his mouth, not a kiss, not quite, there is something wrong, eyes too dark, hold too hard on Credence's hips.

Breaking away Credence feels like black sand, glass worn down by centuries of ocean current. He braces back against the table and he is so hungry, so hungry he could bite into Percy's hand, where it moves against his face, cupping it, trying to drag him closer.

He keens again and Percy blinks, head tilting, looks like he's coming up from under deep water. "Ah, I, I don't know what came over me." The apology is precious to Credence, the violence in him doesn't feel as desperate anymore for blood, for feeding, but he's still hungry.

"Let's go into town, I've eaten your breakfast too, I'm sorry." Credence tamps it down, pushes down the hunger and pain, too monstrous, he needs to be softer.

They dress carefully set apart, Percy's hands kept to himself and Credence's whole body a separate plane away, like a dimension above Percy and feeling so set adrift but it is the way they need to be just to get something done. Credence brought back to substance by grasping hands and Percy's sweet soothing voice, "There's my ghost."

Credence comes down off the wall, vague impressions and then he's whole, caught in the strength of Percy's arms, his nerve endings on fire, caught alight. The ocean to the shore, he's brought in on the tide. To be captured is to find freedom. 

The darkness of Percy's bedroom is a dangerous place, Credence doesn't have enough memories built here. Not of them together, nothing tangible and covered in old blood, nothing to speak to the essence of him and remind him he is real, no just three hundred nights as a shadow.

"Town will be good for us." Percy tugs at him, drawing him away from the shadows and Credence's skin opens up under borrowed clothing as they go. When the bright sunlight hits him he is blinded, his body a wreckage of pain, he stumbles forward into this dance and his heart is so full, so heavy. "Queenie missed you, no one to eat all her cast off experiments." 

Credence laughs softly, pain pushed down, this is all that matters, Percy's soft pleasure.

In the gravel drive leading to the truck Percy pauses and opens his arms up, pulling Credence forward into them, into a loose embrace that is warm sunlight and reality, the puff of breath against his neck, the decadence of clothing soft and many layered between them. “If it’s too much just say you need to lay down, I’ll take you right home okay?”

Home, God Bless, Credence feels it thrum through his blood, his wounds they heal for now, his home is here, in Percy’s arms, longing and belonging. “Okay.”

The ride to town is too bouncy, the shocks on the truck are old and the engine taciturn, when Percy bundles him out of the truck and up the steps to the diner Queenie starts crying right away, flinging herself forward as carefully as someone can fling themselves, her arms tight around his shoulders and Credence shakes, crying because she’s crying.

Tina stands behind the counter, hands braced over a map, looking at Credence like she’s seen a ghost. Credence is very aware she has. “Hello Miss Tina.” He whispers when Queenie tries to make an introduction for them.

“I thought maybe, maybe it was you, it made a strange sort of sense you know?” Tina is the puzzle piece between them and Credence knows the connecting threads but it hurts too much to consider the truth of it completely so he pushes it down and accepts the slice of apple pie Tina pushes over the counter toward him.

Percy looks between them, sharp eyes, hawk like, Credence is starving again, his arms quiver in the sockets of his shoulders and his joints ache like a fever is running through him and he eats the slice of pie like he’s dying and Queenie makes a sound between a sob and something startled and brushes his hair back. The touch is too much but he bites down the cringe along with cinnamon and crisp tart apples. Tina cuts him another slice, she’s not very good at wait staffing, it’s crooked, it doesn’t last long anyway, Credence devours that one too.

“Stop crowding him.” Percy bustles, even though he’s been doing that and Credence appreciates it anyway, it’s too hot in the diner, too full of the breath of people, coffee sweet, not enough silence, not enough still. “So you met back in New York then? I thought as much. Dark hair, quiet, Puritanical name.”

“Ma renamed all of us.”

Percy flinches, Credence knows why, he was there too in the dark church, Modesty, Chastity, Faith. Except there never was a Faith back in New York, and Chastity had gone away to college by the time Ma turned him out onto the street.

He’s so hungry, he’s so hungry but he stops himself at two pieces, stomach turning over pain like knives, it cuts him up inside, turns his organs to grinder’s meat like the time Ma made him drink bleach.

Percy sits next to him and their legs touch, from thigh to hip, and Credence breathes, settles, steadies. He orders two sandwiches despite the pie Credence has already consumed, sips his black coffee and leaves Credence to his own conversational devices as Queenie dashes back into the kitchen, tears still in her beautiful eyes, he doesn’t deserve that kind of care, she hadn’t even known him that long.

“Do you remember how you got here?” Tina asks him.

Which time, Credence wonders, but he knows ultimately she means on the ferry. “No, not really. But there are other things.” He knows Percy is listening very carefully, doesn’t need to look at him to feel the coiled strength at attention. “I remember, looking up at a grey sky on wet sand and it was cold and I wasn’t really there anymore. I remember the night Ma threw me out, I’d been saving money and-” Tina cuts him off, anger and frustration.

“You were constantly covered in bruises and she didn’t even, no one, you were missing and no one even said a word to us, when we asked, I should have looked harder.” Tina holds herself tightly, “I should have looked for you.”

“It’s okay.” Credence mumbles.

“I remember the beach.” Percy’s knuckles are bone white where he’s gripping the counter and curled around the mug. It’s a piece of the puzzle not meant for Tina and Queenie, “Tina doesn’t remember how she got here either, just a warehouse and Queenie’s disappearance.”

Credence isn’t sure about the rest of them but for him he knows, he knows very clearly, that before the ferry he was dead, and now he’s not.

Victims one way or another, and called here on the tide of an impossible shore.

Tina is very smart and she’ll figure it out but he isn’t ready for that yet, Percy changes the subject again, “Credence you’re not here long, what do you want to do with your time?”   
  
He wants, oh, he looks at Percy pointedly, it is as blatant as he dares to be, Percy laughs softly, his grip goes slack on mug and table, Credence smiles at him just the smallest curve, Tina looks confused missing the thread, “I think I would like to visit the church you all found.”

“Oh but, Graves went missing there it’s not at all safe.” Tina’s hands move against the counter idle but nervous, cloth too clean for the amount she’d been scrubbing it on old linoleum.

“We can go tomorrow.” Percy promises. “What else?”

“I want to go camping. On the river, the quiet place.”

Percy makes a face, “I hate camping. Also done, day after tomorrow we’ll hike up, the two of us.”

“Is that even a good idea? The woods have… they have things in them.” Tina bites her lip.

Credence scrubs his hands, feels the stab of pulled skin over unhealed markings as skin catches against Percy’s jeans. “We’ll be okay Miss Tina.”

He can see the moment she puts the pieces together, her first day here, the beginning of her understanding of this journey, the dark shadow and his own name shouted in desperation. He is one of the things in the woods. When she goes to check on her sister Credence turns, the old stool creaking along with him, their legs dragged out of alignment, but he’s bracketing Percy in now with his arms, hands on the edge of the stool on either side of the man’s hips.

“And a bottle of whiskey, and I want you to kiss me.” Credence dares.

Percy looks at him, pain and longing all wrapped up in a precious ribbon, too raw, too broken open, “One kiss.”

Credence feels triumphant, or hungry.

Percy catches his chin in one hand, tilts his face this way and that and Credence considers him just as sharply as he is considered. Percy has half a week of beard on him, grey dusted through the uneven cut of hair both atop his head and facial, he is to Credence devastatingly handsome.

“You look thinner.” Percy frowns.

“That was almost a year ago, how could you even remember?”

“Sweetheart, I’ll never forget you.”

But he had, for a time, at least that boy on the beach, drunk away, drowned away, Credence opens his mouth and Percy drags his thumb along his lower lip, and then pushes it past lips and teeth and Credence’s eyes go wide and maybe wrong, maybe off, too much the woods, too grey, but he presses his tongue against salted skin and caramel sauce and Percy smiles at him, soft, open and hurting. So Credence draws away, draws back, licks his lips as Percy pulls back himself.

“You also look and feel hollower, lighter, I feel like looking at you I should be scared, like there’s too much wrong with you, but you’re the one living behind your eyes regardless, so what could I possibly fear far? I’ve still got fifty pounds on you.” Percy cups his chin again and Credence can feel eyes on them and he goes a little blurry around the edges, too much of moonlight on water, too much cold sand, “How many nights did I sleep thinking I was alone but you were curled up with me? God Credence, I missed you.” And then it’s impossible to focus on anything but Percy looking at him fondly and the hunger twisting up in his gut, peeking eyes forgotten.

It is a discordant hum in him, a string plucked off the beat, he trembles, and Percy cups his face now in both hands, leans in just enough till they’re sharing breath. He darts a terrified glance down at his own arms, bared up to the elbow, and it’s broken open flesh, not blood but heavy ink and exposed bone, his mouth tastes bitter copper sharp, his eyes are milk-dead, grey edges until Percy drags his gaze back, ducking down till they’re met in gaze again and Credence’s back is broken, twisted wrong angles to be this curved down, this suppressed.

“I could never be afraid of you.” Percy whispers. “Bring those sandwiches over here Queenie.” It is more the measured careful control of Percy’s voice than anything else that keeps Credence here.

Percy feeds him, unhinged jaw, monstrous, Queenie and Tina darting around finding more to put on the plate. He collapses after the sandwiches, three pies, a pot of coffee, sobs his apologies into Percy’s windbreaker. “Gonna eat me out of house and home.” Amusement, hand sure up and down his unbroken back. He’s more now, not from food, he doesn’t know what more means right now, just that he can’t bring himself to look at Queenie when she hugs him and kisses his cheek.

“Time to lay down?” Percy asks.

“You didn’t eat.” Credence hiccoughs. 

Percy carries him to the truck, carries him inside, carries him to bed and undresses him. Gauze and alcohol swabs, careful hands turning his limbs, dark water, black blood. Percy brushes his knuckles along the hollow concave of his stomach, over the impressions of his ribs. “Okay?” He asks.

“No.” Credence shivers, puts his hands to his face and hides his eyes there, a curtain for his shame, it’s too daylight sharp to have Percy touching his bare skin. “I scared Queenie.”

“I think she was more scared for you then of you.”

“I’m a monster.”

Percy leans over him and tugs his hands free from his face carefully, presses a kiss to his open wrist before wrapping it up with gauze. “Hardly. I’ve met monsters, they’re callous predators, manipulative and sometimes charming. Shedding pine needles into the sheets and losing physical form doesn’t make you a monster. Monsters are what brought you here.”

Which led them to the other thing, “Are we, I mean, are we going to talk about that?” Credence lays still while Percy switches to bandaging his other arm.

“I was on your case. Before. It wasn’t-” Percy sighs, his jaw goes hard, teeth grinding, “It wasn’t clear before, but I remember it now.”

It hurts so Credence reaches up and presses his free hand to Percy’s cheek, “I’m not dead.”

Percy laughs, bows his head as if in prayer but Credence knows better, when Percy speaks he can feel it against his open palm, lips brushing freshly applied gauze, “No, you’re not, and you’re not a monster either.”

He doesn’t feel like a human either though, something else, half in shadow or half of shadow to be honest. As Percy works him over, careful attentive touches, unraveling layers, he feels himself grounded again. When Percy pushes him back on the bed by his hips, moves his hands to part Credence’s thighs, he’s breathing shallow, repressed, lungs burning with it. Percy pushes him by the shoulder till his back hits the pillows. Staring up at the ceiling is a little better, he can’t see what hands are doing now.

He can feel them though, the swab and sting of alcohol, Percy’s warm palm petting against his skin, easy care, attentive. The brush of lips catches him off guard, rough with unshaven skin against his inner thigh and Credence jerks bodily, while his breath comes a sharp sound in his throat, broken in the middle by a unbidden keen. “Sorry,” Percy mumbles, dragging his hand against the tender bruise he’d pressed his lips to. Credence looks down the length of his own body, pushes himself up on one arm.

“This is why you said I couldn’t stay with you.”

“It’s too easy to fall into you, I’m capable of controlling myself I’m not an animal, but I can see what you want from me and I want to give it to you even though I shouldn’t.”

“Just this is enough.” It isn’t not really, but it is, in a way at least. Grounding and enough to coalless the sloshing darkness inside of him into something more human. His turning stomach settles at the gentle stroke of fingers against his legs, Percy’s dark eyes watching him in turn. “It’s enough.” Credence affirms, the words taking root inside, a tree’s dark limbs cracking apart the pain in the confinement of his ribs, easier to breathe when Percy smiles at him, pain and reassuring.

“If you can’t stay with me, tell me how to go with you.” Percy’s words bloom the flowers inside of him, yellow, orange, and red, fire’s blooms, cinder and ash. Percy isn’t looking at him and Credence knows by this more than by the weighted desperation in his voice that Percy knows already, he could never blow away like Credence does, too grounded, too physical.

Credence pushes himself up all the way, weight taken on his palms, and then he’s shifting his hips, legs hitching till Percy in kneeling between them and Credence can brace his hands on broad shoulder and gripping through thick hair. “Where will we go when it’s all over?”

Percy leans forward, tugs Credence into a firm embrace, hot skin, steady breath. “I don’t know.”

They’re quiet then, eventually Percy moves them around, till they’re back to front, Credence’s head tucked under Percy’s chin, strong arms bracketing him in and each steady breath Percy makes Credence can feel sinking into his spine.

Percy sleeps through Credence losing cohesion, spilling across the bed and onto the floor like fog, some of him slips silky dark inky tendrils, and Percy breathes in and Credence considers the way he fills up strong lungs, sinks into the bloodstream before Percy breathes him back out again, expelled. He drags himself, crawling, arms and body working against the part of him that isn’t real, hips and thighs and lower legs. He pulls himself back to reality partially, predawn light, bright eyes peering in through otherwise empty windows. 

On the porch a familiar face splits open and Credence tears the mimic apart methodically, silences the keening burbling shrieks that threaten through many folds of rotting skin by tearing into misshapen vocal chords with teeth sharper than river-rocks, sharper than knives. He gorges himself in the darkness, thinking about pancakes and apple pie. Arms and legs and fabric feeling skin, silty organ meat that grits sand between his duller teeth. He licks blood and viscera off his long fingers, careful, lapping, full.

There is blood on his long pale arms, blood on his front. He stands now, legs and feet corporeal and horribly physical again. Pins and needles, stabbing pain, as he picks his way barefoot toward the lakeside. The rocks are smooth under his feet, night time silence he ignores the little minnows that come to nibble at his legs, he is no danger to their Cambrian brains, nothing but water. The blood he washes away, black and rotten, unholy, and his wounds reopen, gauze gone wet. He picks it off on the way back to the house but the moonlight stitches his skin together, just enough to sink thin lines into him, a doll with many joints, cracked porcelain surface well worn.

Percy is watching him return, hollow-eyed in the kitchen door, breathing shallow. “Sorry,” Credence apologizes before he’s even fully back, a trail of bandages up from the lake.

Bare chest, jeans not fully on, he can imagine the haste in throwing on clothing, the fear, his guilt is awakening the hunger again, nothing still can last but Percy just pulls him into an embrace, his body so, so hot, so, so full of life and Credence keens and surges into it, enough that Percy tightens his grip and laughs softly. “Should have taken a shower instead, that water is cold as ice.”

Credence nuzzles, just now feeling it, with a contrast to hold himself up against, or rather to be held against. “I’ll make breakfast to apologize.”

Percy laughs again, self-conscious, “All I had was pancake batter and we used that up yesterday.”

Credence squeezes him, worry biting at him, “Percy, you haven’t eaten at all.”

“I’m not really hungry.”

Wrong, something was wrong, prickling at the back of his spine, running up his arms in goosebumps. When he pulls away Percy’s eyes are honey warm, his lips very red, he looks just the same as always really, if maybe more focused, sharper, but for Credence there is always a soft refrain, that what he sees in Credence brings him some measure of comfort.

“You, you have to eat, you have to eat something.” Credence pulls away just a little, studying hard edges, rough planes, but there is nothing transient about Percy, full of heat and life, infinitely more than Credence in every way.

“I haven’t been hungry since the pancakes.” Percy shrugs, “I had coffee at least.”

Credence frets his hands between them and steps back all the way, curling inward with shame over all the skin he has on show, over all the skin in general. His feet stick tacky to the blood-soaked wooden porch and Percy, who has not moved far enough forward to get his own feet dirty drags him forward again, sweeps him up in his arms. “Coffee isn’t food.”

“It was when I…” Percy frowns, carrying Credence back into the house, toward the bathroom, “Was inappropriate.”

“When you licked me.”

Percy huffs.

Credence tries very hard not to smile, he hides the curve against Percy’s hair, against his own arm wrapped around the man’s strong shoulders for support. “So you haven’t been hungry since then?”

“No,” Here Percy pauses, to shift open the door to the bathroom with his hip, to set Credence down on the edge of the tub, stalling, when Credence looks up at him bent over the tap, testing the heat of the water coming from rusty old pipes and bent grout work, he can see that Percy is picking his words carefully, “I can feel,” a cringe, something foreign this is, “I can feel your hunger.”

Credence recoils, the absolute mortification hits him like a truck, dragged under wheels, a gory broken mess, that someone might know the hunger, inhuman and wrong twisting him up inside, the monster he knows himself to be.

Percy put the stopper in the tub, moves with steady hands to remove the bandages Credence hadn’t scratched off already, “You’re sated now, aren’t you?”

The horror is still there but he can’t shy away from the sound of warm relief in Percy’s voice. “Yes, I’m sorry, you’re so kind to me I-” Credence is cut off by the warm press of wet palm against his mouth.

“Shh, you’re fine. I just… if you need anything I’ll do whatever I can to help.” Percy lifts him again, puts him in the warm water, a nicer bathing experience than the ice cold lake by far, especially when a trail of kisses falls against the line of his shoulders, his bare neck. “What are you hungry for?”

_ You, _ Credence cringes, he can’t say that, “Anything really.” That’s not the right kind of hunger anyway, not what Percy is asking him, but oh with kisses and firm hands, he does hunger. Percy groans into his hair and Credence’s face goes livid red, he buries his shame in his hands, “You can feel that too?” He asks, stomach tying into knots.

“I’ll try and be more circumspect in my ministrations.” Percy’s voice is forced jovial, too deep, too hungry, Credence feels drunk on it.

He’s filled up on much more than rotting flesh, than shadows from the woods. Percy kisses his hair, draws it back in his hands to brush his lips over Credence’s forehead like the father he never had but more aptly like a lover he also never had. Gellert had led him on, used him, had never loved him. The thing takes shapes he should fear but Credence no longer fears the woods or men, but slipping away instead, leaving and never being able to come back, ceasing to exist is far more to fear than some monster in the dark. To be overwritten by memories that aren’t his own.

He fears forgetting this, the steady pressure of warm hands washing him clean, tilting his head back and washing his hair too. Honey-brown eyes almost black in the darkness of the bathroom, bare chest and broad shoulders and Percy’s easy strength and quirked lips, amused over something Credence can’t read. He would do anything to keep this, and he had in many ways.

"Your mood is, it's better, why?" Credence looks up at him, "I mean even better than when I first came back." And oh, Percy had been so happy to see him braced above him, there was no way to hide the pleasure from his face and Credence would remember it fondly forever but still, the tension between them had been rife since Percy's withdrawal and subsequent confession from Credence as to the limit of his stay. Yet now he could see the contentment thrumming under the surface.

"I was terrified when I woke up and you weren't there, I remembered what you'd said about your time here, I couldn't feel your hunger anymore."

"Oh."

"I thought you were gone completely, I didn't know what I was going to do, I wasn't ready yet, but there you were in the water." Percy rubs his thumb against Credence's jaw, the column of his throat, against his parted lips. "I want so desperately to save you this time, god Credence, I-" and Percy puts his face against the old porcelain rim, eyes shut tight, pain in the breadth of his shoulders, the curve of his proud spine, "How could I have forgotten you when so much of my life became about you."

"We're not dead." Credence reaches out of the water, hands slick against Percy's shoulders, dripping warmth that slides down to the waistband of his jeans. "Get in the tub." Credence urges.

It is a bad idea, clearly, but Percy doesn't say this, he stands quietly instead and shoves his jeans off and Credence doesn't look, just moves around where Percy shifts him till he's sat between his legs. He goes back against broad chest, and sighs, content, quiet. Eyes half shut and Percy's breath gentle against the side of his neck. 

"We're not dead." Credence repeats, a strong affirmation in the face of the year behind them, the four behind Percy, the evidence against them. Percy nudges his nose against Credence's neck, and they both sigh together.

To be connected to him like this, to feel the endless hunger every time it awakened, what more to feel Credence's hunger for him, impure and lustful, his humiliation is easy to track on his face, neck, his shoulders, flush red. Percy drops a kiss to his shoulder, nudges his nose against the top of Credence's bony spine, face half buried in thick hair. "So, you want to go to the Church? I wasn't going to question it in front of the girls, but you really think that's a good idea? Last time we were there I lost you for months because you had to bail me out of shit."

Credence wriggles his hands in the water till the cuts on his arms spill pink, just enough to make soft waves against their legs. Percy nudges him with his nose again so he stops, "I don't know, but I want to see it for myself." Not a shadow or a dream, or a curve in the middle of the night where moonlight spills, but himself- physical and formed.

"That's not us, you know? It's just using us, using you."

Percy's words ring true of course but the similarities are close enough, painful enough, hold him like ropes bound down to a life he never led. Too made of faith and belief, his own truth too easily manipulated by the dark water, the high cliffs, the empty halls of a school, the remaining foundation of a church turned funeral pyre. "You wanted to solve the mystery, it's part of it, isn't it?"

Percy sighs against the back of his neck, moves his arms around to tighten a bracket, a strong ring around his chest, holding him back and close and kept, but not safe, he cannot promise Credence safety. "I'd give it up if it kept you with me."

"We don't have the luxury of knowing the future before we make our choices in the past."

"I'm sorry," Percy whispers against his skin, holy, holy, hallelujah, "I never should have pushed you away, I'm so sorry, like I couldn't keep it in my fucking pants, I was just scared of it, of you, of needing and not being alone, and knowing I couldn't keep you safe."

Rejoice, and Credence feels a sick sort of sordid satisfaction, redemption in his own sacrifice, which had ultimately been selfish overall, the same as throwing himself to the waves, running when it felt hopeless, even when there were people depending on him. Validation he doesn't deserve just as Percy never really deserved the blame. He lowers his head, brushes lips to strong arm where it links around him, moves his hands bath-warm wet, slide against the place his lips had pressed.

"You're not a wound for me." Credence murmurs. "I just like to be close to you, and that's fine, we can just be like this. We don't need to do anything else. I'm not waiting, I'm not trying to run you down, I just like you. I like being with you."  _ Following you around for almost a year _ goes unspoken. Content to be the shadow, and what has Credence been but a chain of sacrifices, to his Ma, to Gellert, to the waves, to the woods, and now his willing spill, the pain and hunger of him, for Percy.

"You're a wound to me," Percy whispers and it feels like being torn open, the pain wakes in him like a knife cut, like his skin spreading apart, gashes and tears, but he looks down and none of it bleeds the way his heart does, "I can't stave the flow, I wasn't prepared for you Credence. I'd do anything to keep you safe, to give you back what you lost." He's not the one bleeding, Percy sighs into his hair, face hidden there, "I need to know you're okay."

The hunger makes sense now, Percy's need to know he's okay, and what more physical thing than hunger. Bodily needs, whereas Credence has always put more into emotional needs. Let him fast, let him thirst, as long as a soft smile is his grace, as long as a tender touch is waiting.

"I'm okay." He promises, it's hollow though, he can't give Percy what he needs anymore than Percy can give in return.

Credence feels like jelly, like a yearling with rickety legs, Percy draws him out of the bath and into thick towels before pulling him back to the bed. Dawn is just hinting through the windows so Percy drags the curtains tighter before joining him on the bed, climbing over him in the darkness, bracing half leaning over him, hands on either side of his head. 

"Do you need me to look at your wounds?" Percy’s eyes darken as Credence's hunger awakens, what the bathwater soothed out of him, lazy fatigue, a meal to fill his belly and make him slow, these things do little to banish the other hunger of an attractive man braced above him in the dark, asking if he wants to be cared for.

"Please, then we should rest." Credence can be responsible, really. Percy smiles at him, infinitely fond, Credence sighs with the softness inspired from it.

Percy gets a new roll of gauze from the bedside table's drawer, a handful of alcohol wipes. Credence expects him to sit beside him maybe but instead Percy straddles him, wider hips pinning down Credence's thin frame, and Credence swallows, throat bared, skin stinging sharp pins and needles, feverish. "You said," Credence breathes out, measures the accusation in his tone, mellow, mellow, "You would stop being so, that you would be-" Credence tries really, his hands catch in the pillowcase, tugging at his own hair, looking up at Percy eyes too black, too wide, lips wet and bitten.

"Circumspect in my ministrations." Percy draws one of his arms down away from the pillow, both big broad hands attentive on one arm, dragging it straight, rubbing his thumb all the way down the inner line from Credence's wrist to his elbow, rising goosebumps and wriggling hips.

Credence keens frustration.

"This doesn't look as bad as it did yesterday, maybe the extra food?"

"Maybe?"

Percy finds two cuts high on his arm to attend to before switching to the other arm, "So how far have you gone?"

"Gone?" Credence bites his lip hard and grounding until Percy reaches out and takes him by the jaw, pushes his thumb almost rough against his lips and Credence gasps open mouth, self-inflicted pain stilled.

"How far have you gone with someone else, how experienced are you?"

"Oh-oh." The full body shudder isn't answer enough, Percy just demands words, communication, "Kissing, mostly." He shivers, "Not very much of that, h-he said I bled too easy."

Percy's jaw goes tight and then he opens his mouth like he's going to say something very sharp, and then he shuts it again very quickly and grits his teeth. "Okay." He finally says, careful but still furious.

"And- and then there, there's the- uh," Credence cringes, "The things we've done, the... before?" Percy just watches him, makes him suffer, offering no assistance, "The way you put my neck beneath your teeth, the way you held me." Credence's hunger twists him up inside, tangled guts and darker things, just remembering it, just being forced to repeat it. Need and pressure, heat and Percy looking down at him, trying to be neutral, trying not to be too hot, too passionate, too angry and now too intense in other ways, feeding on Credence's hunger too.

"Is that why you want me to kiss you?" Percy is clearly just petting his arm now, long strokes from wrist to elbow and back again, sure fingers rubbing circles into his open palm.

“I don’t understand?” Credence sounds so small, so soft, an embarrassment for how big he feels on the inside, all noisy hunger and clamouring braying sounds, an endless keen that refuses him any relief.

“Because it’s what you have reference for to ask?”

Credence frowns, “I didn’t think you’d give me anything else so I didn’t bother asking.”

Percy raises Credence’s hand to his lips, runs hot breath, rough skin, presses an open kiss to the center of his hand and drags chapped lips to tender soft wounds until it’s a mixture of pain and more, Credence shivering beneath him, eyes as dark as a flooded mine shaft and just as deep. “And what would you ask?”

He’s called on his bluff mostly, “To touch you, I want to touch you.” It’s earnest at least, what he’d do with him, Credence isn’t really sure though, and to be honest he has touched Percy. Nights upon nights as close to him as skin, as shadow.

Percy frees him from hips and hands, rolls over on the bed and arches his eyebrows in an expressive way, a clear ‘well then’ and Credence rolls onto his side and then up onto his knees to kneel beside him on the bed, hands stilled in the open air between them. Percy is laying on his back, one arm tucked behind his head, the other loose on the bed next to him, his ankles crossed, long legs on display as well as skin. So much skin, so much dark hair, so much open invitation because they hadn’t redressed, and Percy is right there, giving him permission and yet Credence stalls and stutters forward, his hands, his arms, his whole body trying to move into it, to lean into his own desire to push his hands against heat and muscle mass and take what’s placed on offer but he doesn’t know where to start or how to touch, doesn’t know anything.

He closes his eyes even though it defeats some of the purpose of this exercise but he can’t watch his own hands move against skin, he can’t, so he shuts himself away and reaches out slow and careful to press his hands against warmth and heat, to draw up flesh made hard by the flex of muscle as he shifts his palms against it.

He opens his eyes, and knows they’re not human, and his hands they’re not much either, veins shot through with sick black like ink or poison in a videogame, not that he’s played much of those but the cultural imagery is clear. He has his right hand over the center of Percy’s chest, right between his ribs. His left hand is molded to Percy’s inguinal crease, that precious indentation between abdomen and hips that invites his eyes to look where he’s not allowed, not even now, not even now when it is clear how blatant the invitation is for him to do so.

His hands skitter soft toward one another, palms tracking through sparse hair and over faint scar tissue he doesn’t have stories for. A graze against shoulder marred heavily with knotted tissue he drags the pads of his fingers against and Percy’s lips twitch into a smile. A brush of his wrist against the drag of Percy’s pulse and he can taste it beating in his own blood.

“Do I hurt you much?” Credence asks, a hand curved politely around a throat readily bared, the other low on a tight stomach pressure and care.

“Only when I breathe.” Percy drags him down, till he’s cradled into his side. “That’s enough sweetheart.”

Credence is shaking and he doesn’t realize until there are strong arms bracketing him in, heat and warmth, offered comfort, “You don’t have to be afraid of me.” Credence whispers, “I’ll never hurt you, I’d do anything for you.”

Percy tracks a hand down his spine, gentling, reassuring, “Yeah, part of the problem, I’m not good to put that kind of faith in anymore, maybe never was.”

Credence closes his eyes tight, frustration turning him up inside, hunger a rising crest, his hands feel too sharp against mortal flesh and bone when he clutches to Percy but the man makes no sound of distress, “Let me decide for myself.”

Percy laughs, hollow, “Okay,” a breath careful, “Okay.”

Sleep takes them and they wake midway through noon, heat sticking their skin together and Credence muffles endless yawns in bedsheets, pools out of the bed loose limbs and sluggish, his muscles aching faint. Little cuts and bruises look unimpressive in the dark room and he pulls on old jeans worn by wilderness and time, Percy throws a hoodie at him and an old t-shirt and Credence swims in both but it's something that hasn't been on him for a year so he cherishes it.   
  
Percy stands morose in front of the fridge until Credence curls his hand around his wrist and pulls him out into the sick-shock of sunlight and they creep under the shade of trees to the truck. Credence sits curled up in the seat, hands over his eyes till Percy manages to fish a pair of sunglasses from under the seat.   
  
Credence graces him a weak smile and they're off.   
  
The diner is empty with a sign on the open door, "Took the day off, help yourself!"   
  
Hinny isn't outside, and Percy makes himself coffee while Credence cracks eggs onto the griddle, lays out rashers of bacon and hashbrowns. They eat in the kitchen, watching the front door but no one walks by, no ferry comes in, no tourists or sheriff, no Queenie or Tina.   
  
"Like being at the end of the world." Percy shoves some of his potatoes onto Credence’s plate, pours himself more coffee.   
  
They clean up and Percy writes an IOU and tacks it to the register.   
  
There is a Closed sign on the corner store, a bucket of bait lays overturned and rotting in the alley where Credence had seen the deer last spring. Jack is sitting on a bench overlooking the water, he doesn't look away from the break when Percy leads them over. Credence feels a spike of momentary fear until he focuses and can read the ride and fall of the man's chest.   
  
"I see you found your boy."   
  
"No thanks to you." Percy leans against the back of the bench, hands bracing his weight and Credence half curls into his side. "Where is Hinny?"   
  
Jack shrugs, "There wasn't a lake, we weren't an island you know? Just a mountain town, just the river for the logging. Just the old mine and the smaller lake. I can't remember when it changed."   
  
"Queenie's boss left, or vanished, are you going to do anything about that?" Percy challenges, and Credence didn't know about this, but he'd been gone for a bit, lost in the dark till he found Percy again just a day ago, his light in the endless night. Credence curls his hand around Percy's wrist again, soft, quiet. The forest burns a sign of distress against his spine, flicks and curls.   
  
"Why did you have to come here Graves?"   
  
"I didn't ask-" Percy hisses but Credence tugs at him, gesturing desperately, mute horror, Jack's stomach is blood-dark, from Percy's angle he couldn't have seen but Credence pulls him over, around and Jack's hand is limp next to him, and his gun next to that, and the wind from the water catches just right and lifts the bitter scent of organ meat, gunpowder, and blood up just right. Credence's stomach turns hunger, his mouth waters, and then he retches, gagging over the instant reflex of hunger, horror at himself, "Fuck!" Percy moves fast around the bench.   
  
Jack grabs his hands when Percy tries to check the wound, holds his arms, looks up at him, level and too sharp for all that blood loss, it's all the way in the grass, soaking out, Credence holds his hands over his mouth and nose, refusing to breathe it in.   
  
"None of us belong here, none of us, and you had to come, you had to show up and poke the hornet's nest. You want my help? You go look in the church folder, you-" Jack stops, starts, he looks so tired, eyes closing, he looks through Percy when he opens them again, at the water, the cool steel waves, the gray day, "You fucking remember what you did to us Detective."   
  
"Credence, run to the clinic, get-" Percy starts to order but Jack reaches out toward Credence, and he isn't fast enough to move out of range when the man grabs his arm, surprisingly strong, drags him forward, "Jack let us get you-," it won't help, there is no help.   
  
Jack laughs, blood splatter and visceral hatred, not at Credence, he drags him forward, "You're hungry. Always hungry, come on then, make use of me."   
  
Percy yanks Credence back, arms bracketing, eyes wide, Credence doesn't see the fear but he scents it as sharp and acrid as the blood spilled out on the ground, the disgust.   
  
"No, no, no." Credence sobs, his stomach  _ hurts _ it hurts so much, knives and sharper things, wrenching up cutting him from the inside out, and he clenches his black-blood hands over the pain, and ink chokes out of his mouth and blood out of Jack's, "No, no, no." Credence begs.   
  
"And they go into the woods, and they don't come back, but you came back and we couldn't heal you." Jack isn't talking to them anymore, but has he ever been, "Yeah, you look in the church file Percy you fucking bastard." He struggles, last energy, stands up and his insides spill out, long chords of glistening red and black, sick white, one jerking step, another.   
  
Percy pushes around Credence, goes to grab Jack but it's too late, the man jerks himself sudden sharp like a broken doll over the railing of the seawall and into the thick black water. When Percy moves to jump in after him Credence half tackles him tugging, silent screaming, back and far away, and Jack doesn't come up, doesn't float like a corpse, isn't there anymore.

Credence huddles into his chest and Percy holds him tight enough to bruise, it does, his skin too sensitive suddenly, cuts opening up and soaking through t-shirt and black hoodie. Percy gentles his sleeve up, drags his hand against welling black, smears it thick under his broad palm. "The clinic." Percy whispers hollow between them. He swipes his hands against his jeans but they leave thick black on the gun when he picks it up from the bench where Jack had left it and Credence watches at Percy tucks it into his waistband, safety assured on, rounds emptied. "Never do this it's highly unsafe." Percy's gallows humor does nothing to overwrite the sickly sweet scent of human violence, does nothing to soothe the hunger pang.   
  
"Percy." Credence leans into him, half on a sob, bloody and empty, and Percy opens his arms to him, holds him again, one hand tangling gently into his hair, not so desperate but still firm, still there, physical and real, and Credence bleeds into him, or on him at least. "Percy." He keens open sorrow, and the tears run hot against the skin he has his face pressed into, rough unshaven neck, his lips open to salt and life, to copper under thin ephemeral flesh and muscle.   
  
Just to be still, to stop the turning, to not feel the pull of the dark trees, the cool water, to not be reminded of his own shallow life. It's easier here, tucked in against Percy, the scent of blood covered up by aftershave and sweat, by soap and skin.   
  
Percy's hands in his hair and soothing up and down the shuddering line of his spine, whispered cooing sweet sounds into Credence's hair. The chittering comes unbidden, slips past Credence's teeth and sighs out of him, inhuman but so sweet, soft relief. His edges blur, some of him wraps around Percy in ways it cannot or at least shouldn't. He's too empty to scold himself back into mortal shape, just to be, just to have Percy try to hold all of him and somewhat succeed, affection, soothing hands.   
  
"I've got you." Percy promises.   
  
Credence believes him and it's easier to breathe then, and then it's easier to be, to have shape that isn't too much, too many, and the chittering of wrong things hiding in the treeline of his bleached ribs silences too. "I'm okay." Credence lies, but it's a good lie, holy.

"Clinic." Percy draws him along, an arm around him, hand comforting weight on his hip.   
  
It's empty, like the diner, like the corner store, like the newspaper, like the sheriff's office, like the lake. Percy lifts him onto the table and loots the drawers for bandages and a bottle half empty of peroxide. He's tender but Credence doesn't feel much anyway, doesn't feel the sting more than a muffled thing, like a touch through layers of thick wool. Where Percy holds him bleeds warm, burns bruise, he feels that, tender and aching hunger.   
  
Credence remembers the last time they were here, Percy's own hunger mirror, his need, his teeth and weight. In the contrast this is far more damning, Percy's silent gentle touch, his caring glances, the attempts at smiles when Credence catches his eye, to reassure him. It is far more intimate than a few short weeks of knowing someone, far more sensual than base desire.   
  
"There we go." Percy tapes over the gauze and Credence looks down at his arms, at his legs, all run across with clean gauze, stop-gaps against the tide, helping so little, but Percy tries, hungers to make sure Credence is okay. A wound in the both of them bleeding, helpless to be mended.   
  
"Do you want to go to the sheriff station?" Credence redresses, he knows the answer already, of course Percy does.   
  
"Not yet, I promised to take you to the church, if you still want to go."   
  
Credence doesn't want to go but he knows he has to, that it is something calling to the darkness in him, to return, to see, as flesh and ink-blood, shell-bone. "Yes, okay."   
  
Percy steals more gauze and medical tape, or takes maybe is better, is it stealing if there might be no one left to steal from? Credence isn't sure of the legality, but morally it hardly feels wrong.

Percy finds the path, and Credence does too, called by memories not his own, every day taking this trail, cutting through hiking path to get to school. He has double vision, stumbles and Percy catches him, a snake in the grass but no, and a deer startled, and Ma shouting at him as he hides, and Modesty breaking her arm climbing a tree, and no, none of this is right. He grew up in New York, took the bus to school grey morning or snow, and Modesty didn't break her arm, he broke his, falling down the stairs, broke his skin on belt buckle's cruel lash, didn't hide in the trees because there were no trees to hide in. Ma wasn't particularly loud either, her hatred carried far enough quiet.   
  
Gentle hand brushes his hair back from feverish face. "We could go home." Forget the church, the sheriff, the empty town, Percy offers. But the cabin isn't home, and the church isn't home, and New York sure as heaven and hell both isn't home. Percy is home, so he's already there.   
  
He shakes his head and slips his hand down, bandage rough, clasps it in with Percy's and squeezes gently, "I'm okay. Let's keep going."   
  
There isn't much to see, burned down foundation overgrown, old stone steps. Credence balances up them with Percy's help. He isn't sure what he's looking for, what he expects to happen but neither of them go anywhere. It's still early spring chill, dappled sunlight through trees, Percy's hand tight in his.   
  
"Let's check on Queenie and Tina." Credence decides when nothing continues to happen and Percy helps him down off the foundation, which is of course when the world goes full black and Credence trips forward and Percy is there, solid weight and security, the vessel for all of Credence's trust.   
  
Percy's long coat sweeps forward before it settles back, except Percy isn't wearing a long coat, and he isn't wearing a tie, dress shirt, vest. "Hey, you okay there sweetheart?"   
  
Credence chokes, opens his eyes wide and fearful, when he tries to step away he steps out of himself entirely, and watches as another him cringes, curls inward, but isn't strong enough to pull away. "You can't come back here, you have to leave." He demands, tremoring voice. "If you're a good God fearing man, you'd leave us alone."   
  
Credence watches not-him be settled on his feet. Detective Graves smiles at him, reaches out casual-cruel to push dark hair away from a fearful pale face. "I'm afraid I can't say I'm very fearful of God, if you'd let me in, I'd be glad to let you guide me to deliverance though."   
  
Not-him keens out, hands fretting, trying to push him back with air currents and desperation, "Didn't you get enough last time? Please go away, please just go away."

Detective Graves takes a step back, hands up, charisma dropping, nothing aggressive though, just maybe fatigue, "Credence, I looked into your sister, Faith? Where is she, do you know?"   
  
"S-she's in Seattle, she's going to art school."   
  
"No she's not, she's on a missing person's poster. The school your Ma said she went to hasn't heard of her."   
  
Credence's hand goes to his mouth, a sob caught up and pushed down, "She's not dead, she's not the girl you found, go away."   
  
"And Faith isn't the only girl missing, and not the only one involved with your Mother's congregation either, and she's stolen all of you, Credence I need your help."   
  
Credence is crying, silent, mouth covered, "It can't be Faith, it's not Faith, and- and they all just, they wanted to get out of here, it's terrible here, they're someplace better."   
  
Detective Graves grasps his wrists, drags his hands away from open mouth tear-tracked cheeks, "She stole you too, black hair, brown eyes, little boy lifted from a library, it was a cold winter in New York, but he looked just like you."   
  
"Little Modesty, Chastity, Faith. Credence, how many children have to get hurt before you help me?" Detective Graves turns his hands palm up, pries his fingers away from digging into painful tracks, torn up skin, inflamed with light infection. "How much more pain do you have to take to appease her hunger, when you know it's never going to be enough for her?"   
  
Credence, actual Credence, pushes back into him bitter blood, hissing, bared teeth, this Graves isn't allowed to force his Percy to see this, not when they've come so far, explicitly laid before them just how much a Graves can hurt. He isn't allowed, and Credence is more smoke than breath, more pain than bone but he drags and pulls till Percy is stumbling in sunlight and Credence's fresh bandages are bled through.   
  
"Holy shit." Percy slurs and stumbles, taking Credence with him, right into cold underbrush and dirt. "Fuck."   
  
Credence kisses him, not much teeth, it's very clumsy. "They're not us." He hisses.   
  
"Jesus." Percy speaks blasphemy and Credence kisses him again, short and soft in apology.

“We’re okay.” Credence promises him and Percy’s hands are on him, holding him, and then they’re gently bringing him down and Percy’s lips are wholesome and kind against his temple and Percy’s breath is fast, his pulse racing, and Percy is there and it’s true, they’re okay.

“Tell me about your mother.” Percy holds him tight, goes limp on the ground and just takes Credence’s weight, stable and still.

So Credence whispers to him, not a phantom memory about a church in Washington he doesn’t remember but about the one in New York. The homeless shelter, the community garden, the woman who took him out of the foster system and had him convinced that her cruelty was preferable to unfamiliar faces. The belt strap on his hands, arms, back, legs. The dark rooms, the silence, the anger simmering.

Credence tells him about the cold nights, the attic room with no window in the summer, the kind faces bleeding together as everyone saw but no one understood or did anything with the information. Of Tina who looked worried, who tried to get him to talk sometimes, but Credence knew better than to depend on anyone but himself.   
  
What he doesn't talk about is the man who found Credence when he needed to be seen the most, because Percy knows that story and how it ends and it's not worth the pain to repeat it. "Ma didn't steal us, we were just," Credence sighs, casting for the right words, "Unwanted."   
  
They stand, brush leaves and dirt off, and Percy tucks his hair back out of his face and looks up at Credence like he is a thing of grace, holy, bringer of Armageddon, and maybe he is, everything is falling apart, "Queenie's and then home." Percy determines their course and shepherds Credence back onto the path, straight and narrow, or not so much, overgrown and dark, and filled with ghosts. Layers and layers of a tall dark-haired teenager walking in the echo he leaves behind and now a broad stranger dragging steps behind Percy and Credence knows if he turns he'll see them again and again, slipping memories, and he's slippery too, only physical based on the pressure of a hand on his back.   
  
The thread, he's unraveling, but he has a day maybe, and he doesn't have a clock ticking down but he has something inside of him that whispers, tells him he's not himself; he's a boy in the woods hiding between dark trees and bones, looking for sisters who can't hear his calls, rotting in underbrush and sleeping under covers made from a small town’s terrible secrets. Wolves with men shaped skins abound, Percy is a sheep in a wolf's disguise and Credence is the one with the sharp teeth and the endless hunger this time around.   
  
The echo falling behind him tells him he's wrong, that Credence and the boy eating up his shadow, they've always been the wolf.

Queenie and Tina are sitting on the porch with Newt, or they’re sitting on the porch swing and Newt is nursing a bird on the steps. Newt catches sight of them and it’s skittering gaze, tracking over Credence, hands ever so gentle where he tends the broken wing, the cheeping beak. Credence remembers strong hands pulling him out of the cold water, warm blanket, cat hair on his clothes, kind eyes and freckles.

“Jack isn’t going to be around.” Percy is vague, leaning against the railing next to Newt. Credence can see the impression of the gun tucked into his waistband from where he’s standing behind him. Tina and Newt, Queenie, these are people Percy knows and Credence knows them shallowly, as a shadow, obscure glimpses or references and he has no real place here. Except he’s known them for months now even though they haven’t known him. Tina hiking through dark trees and learning Percy’s lessons like they’re law, Newt left adrift as the ferry sails without him somewhere else and not here, even Queenie who he had known as long as Percy hasn’t known him to the extent Percy has.

Long nights, eyes in the windows, whiskey down the drain, blood and smoke.

If they notice the blood on Percy’s sleeves no one says anything about it. “We should have a nice dinner together tonight.” Queenie invites them inside, leaves Tina and Newt on the porch. “They’re being awkward, it’s cute.” Queenie confides in them when they’re in the kitchen, cocoa in mugs and Credence soothing his wounds on hot ceramic.

Queenie’s hands try to keep busy, they move restlessly over clean countertops, check emptying cabinets, Percy watches her till the tension crests and Credence can taste it in the air, the tender quaver of her skin, and his hunger is a tidal wave to match, emotional energy, a drumroll, and Percy can feel it and it’s not meat, it’s not scenting blood, it’s something worse in the water, so Percy reaches out and tucks Queenie’s head under his chin and she holds on tight.

She’s trying to hold herself together too, now that everything is breaking apart, and Credence understands how desperate for normalcy she feels, as his skin splits open, his anxieties made physical. “Jacob got lost last night on the trail, and we found him sitting on the porch this morning, and for a moment he looked like he didn’t recognize me, like he was seeing me for the first time.” Queenie cries pretty too, like she does everything else, “And while it sure is sweet to see him light up to see me, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do if he doesn’t remember me for good. We tucked him in and Newt promised he’d keep an eye on him for us but he’s Newt y’know? And he’s been doing so badly we moved him into the living room because Jacob can’t take care of him and work the bakery too.”

Percy draws back, pats her hair down and fetches her a kitchen towel to clean her face up. “Why don’t you move in with Jacob at the bakery?”

Queenie frets the paper between her hands, “I don’t want him to think I’m moving too fast, you know I don’t think things through.”

“Queenie I think Jacob would be delighted to learn you want to move in with him, it’s been a long enough courtship.”

Credence thinks of moving fast, and what is moving too fast? A year of wanting, following dedicated, and courtship returned, and bathing together, kissing, watching a boy-shaped form devouring rotting things and washing the blood off in moonlight. Frustration turns up inside him, ghosts and a ghost, in particular he’s the ghost, haunting, and maybe Percy should follow his own advice.

But it isn’t as if Credence is going to tell him that. A sigh, mirrored softly by Queenie, “I guess you’re right.” She admits.

Queenie smiles at Credence then and takes his hands in hers and it’s odd to be there, to be given attention and her kind smile, she sniffs, rallying, he knows what that’s like, “You wanna help me make dinner lambchop?” She looks at him like he’s made of soft things, tender, reminds him he’s brittle and not just pain-flared nerve endings and countdown timer, violence and viscera.

“Yes please.”

Percy smiles and leaves them in the kitchen, but he doesn’t go far, Credence can see him on the porch through the kitchen screen door, mindful, protective.

Queenie sets boxes and cans out on the counter, “Was that Jack’s handgun?”

Credence bites his lip and nods carefully, “He went to the water.”

“I’m sorry sweetie, you were there?” She hands him a can opener and he steadies himself with repetition, metal and gripping teeth, tin lids. 

Diced tomatoes, artichokes, and tomato puree, “We were, Percy didn’t seem as upset, has this happened many times before?”

Queenie fills a large pot with water, keeps her attention on the task, the words unspool from her loose, like if she doesn’t focus on them too hard they can’t sink in, “A few times. Usually it was travelers like us, but we’ve found people places, not all the houses are empty.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No I’m sorry honey, you don’t need that on top of everything else. You hungry? There’s some cake in the fridge why don’t you help yourself to some?”

He’s too starved to demure, he attempts but his stomach ties him up in knots, his throat constricts remembering slick blood, pink sweet meat, nausea rolls in with further hunger and his mouth salivates at memory and anticipation. He sits at the kitchen table and watches her put the fettuccine on to boil, tipping the cans into a pan with garlic and olive oil. The scent of cooking food and chocolate too-sweet and heavy on his tongue, it overwrites everything else.

They all eat together at the kitchen table and Credence is on thirds (and half of Percy’s firsts) thigh to thigh with Percy when Jacob asks him how spring break is going, “Pretty well Mr. Kowalski, Modesty isn’t stealing the sample cookies again is she?” Credence freezes, fork halfway to his mouth, pulse notching up like an arrow on the nock. Percy’s hand wraps around his knee, a squeeze.

Newt watches him like a hawk and Queenie and Tina pause, but Jacob laughs softly, “Oh she’s a growing girl Credence, she can have as many sample cookies as she wants, and you too, come around for a free pastry or two, you’re always welcome you know.” Jacob is so good natured, so caring, which Credence knows to be true but before this moment it was by way of coffee dropped off for Percy along with a box of pastry goods to make sure he wasn’t starving through the winter.

“I couldn’t sir, but thank you.”

“You know I just throw them out, what if I put them in a box for you and leave them on the old stone bench by the graveyard?”

“I couldn’t.” Credence whispers and then Newt reaches out sharply to take the salt from in front of Jacob.

Jacob tells Queenie this is the best meal he’s had since the last time she cooked dinner for him, Newt excuses himself to check on his animals, and Percy keeps his hand on Credence’s leg until they’re the only ones left sitting at the table, Tina putting dishes away and looking thoughtful, just the three of them.

“I know the bench he was talking about.” Tina clicks the cabinet closed. She’s gotten used to the oddities, the ‘weird shit’ Percy had warned about.

“Kowalski’s bakery has been around since what?” Percy moves his hand from Credence’s knee to drape across the back of his chair, palm curving carefully against boney shoulder sinking heat and comfort.

“1945.” Credence sits carefully still in his chair, hands clasped like sunday morning, his breathing is shallow till Percy moves his hand up and carefully curves around the back of his neck, the side, into the hollow dip of flesh that joins shoulder to curving throat. Credence wants to go back to the cabin, he wants to curl up with Percy under quilts and in the soft dark where words won’t spill out of him all wrong.

Tina is looking at them carefully, she frowns at the proprietary hand, the way Credence is bowed internally but also toward Percy, he remembers her so clearly, putting extra money down for her coffee, donations for the soup kitchen, books under one arm, and combat boots as often as close-toed pumps and panty hose.

“What?” Percy challenges.

“Nothing,” Tina turns and heads for the door, stops before she’s out it, “I still think it’s a bad idea to go camping, just saying sir.” She’s out before an argument can be made against her. Really in a lot of ways she’s right. Every hour brings Credence closer to a loss of self, and it’s a bad choice to drag Percy out onto the river just to be alone with him but he wants it and he can’t stop the hunger.

Percy leans into him, presses his face to Credence’s hair, “Ready to go?” the kitchen is quiet in a bad way, ratcheting pain licking flame up his spine, yellow painted walls, sunflower curtains, he closes his eyes till he can focus only on the heat of breath against his neck, the brush of cheek against his hair.

“Yeah.”

They say their goodbyes and it doesn’t feel as final as Credence knows it’s going to be for them, especially when Newt brushes his hair back for him nervously as Percy tries to convince Queenie they don’t need to take a bunch of leftovers with them. As Percy fails Newt’s hands fall to collect Credence’s, turning them palm up. Credence feels nerves fray, but he doesn’t have to meet Newt’s gaze, it isn’t caught. “I thought you were an animal, pulling you up, and the water never wanted to let you go.”

Credence curves away from him, he doesn’t remember this past impression, but he knows it’s true, Newt isn’t like Jacob, he’s more like them, from someplace else, but with eyes more open and like Credence this place has it’s hooks in him. “I don’t remember.”

“The water calls for you and just remember, you’re more than that.”

Percy pushes close, draws Credence away, broader than Newt and protective his eyes glint in the dark and Credence remembers heavy pockets, broken flesh, coughing up shrapnel from rotten meat and tattered leaves. “Alright there Scamander?” Percy drags Credence’s hands free, bandages and bruises, gentle grip but firm. Credence turns his hand easy as can be, curls around firm wrist and Percy closes his own hand so they’re locked like that and Newt’s gaze catches it, the protective stance like a wing around a fledgling and his lips quirk just faintly.

“I’m not going to steal him.” Newt whispers, “I tried.” He shrugs, turns as odd as he came, loping gait back up to the porch where Queenie and Tina are waiting.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Percy frowns and they’re back in the truck, and he curves his hands tight around the steering wheel while the engine warms up, “Why must he be like that?”

Credence shrugs.

They don’t go home, wrong turn, wrong turn, dark lane, the empty diner. Percy stops by the Sheriff station and leaves the engine running, headlights on the open door. “I’m going to see if I can’t lock it up, stay here, it’s safer.” Credence nods obedience but as soon as Percy is in through the open door he’s no longer himself, flesh and blood negated for the dark, the unholy whisper of wind through the tall pines.

He’s not ready for this but the desire is stronger than his bones, the hunger abates, it’s easier to fall away to this, and he knows with dread it’s going to make him pay to be again.

Percy’s steps fall silent as the moldy carpet soaks up springy each impression. Credence settles and Percy holds the maglite aloft, the heavy weight of his body silhouetted by the light coming in through the front windows. “Told you to stay in the truck.” Percy speaks to the shadows, Credence cannot respond but he isn’t cowed enough to return to being.

The station looks like it’s been abandoned for far longer than half a day, but Credence himself feels like a lifetime has passed since Jack went to the water so it feels less surprising to see the fungus growing up from ruined carpet. Intelligently they should come back during the day but Percy is all hard lines and dogged focus.

The old television is still on, static with track lines cutting through, the CRT screen glowing sick pale blue-green instead of white. The light it throws going down the hallway looks like sunlight from deep underwater, Credence gutters under the weight of it but keeps close to Percy, dipping up his spine, curled up under his shirt, weighty in the hollow of his throat. Percy palms a box of ammo as they pass by the lockers lining the long wall.

The last time the doors were mostly closed, this time they’re all open and a cursory pass of torch beam into dark rooms shows figures in repose. A uniformed body long in decay laid out on a table in a meeting room, tangled vines holding the body of someone else tied still to the noose they’d been hung with, and half eaten rotten meat lay in a mess of gorey antlers still fairly recognizable as human but no face Credence knew (except he does, deep down) with open gasping mouth stuffed through with vines. The thing eating it is still there and Percy very quietly shuts the door on long-long-limbs and eyeless face, on sharp teeth and talons.

There are no bodies in the records room, but it’s been turned upside down, files dumped onto the floor, cabinets dented in, fluorescent light hanging broken. Percy crouches down and pokes through the files upturned. “Damn it Jack.”

“I think we’ll have to come back when it’s light.” Percy moves to stand and knocks back into a table. Before either of them can react the drawer that had been resting there tips over and crashes to the ground.

Percy’s hands don’t shake on the gun, they load from the box and Credence feels a pang of something like pride, maybe it’s not premonition but when the door Percy had just shut explodes outward the man is ready. Flashlight laid along the barrel like a sight. Again Credence hasn’t played many video games but the cultural connections are strong, he feels split in two, external observer, close as a heartbeat. It makes the feeling of watching a character run through a level that much stronger.

The first shot blows out the side of a rotting pale face, floral arrangements burst from the torn flesh. Peonies and poppies and the blood that drips down is too thick too black and it spreads rot along the ground, corrupts files and old paperwork.

Credence looks down from Percy’s shoulders, or maybe his waist, or the darkness of his wrists, another shot splatters viscera on the hallway’s pale blue wall. 

The tipped over drawer has a number of files spilling out of it, glossy black and white photos fall under flashlight beam as Percy aims low. An empty church, a dead girl, a broken wrist. Percy shoots again as inhuman howl echoes through the station. Something bigger is coming, skittering claws drag unholy in the dark, the small thing pushes up from it’s howling mess against the back wall and then down further.    
  
Credence drags too, drags himself into cohesion, slams body against the door, “The files.” He hisses, voice raw, blood comes up with the next breath. His hands lock the door as if he has experience in the action. Percy curses behind him and scrambles with the folders, “Hurry.” Credence urges as the door bends inward with the first hit.

He is sure as the blood in his mouth, he can't take down the thing building itself up from rot and decades of frustration and buried secrets in the hall outside. His world slows down into the brace, the door bending, the pop of the lock. Breathe, breathe and be, and his own blood loss is dizzying, wet warmth making his hands slide slick against the doorknob.

A crash comes from behind him and he starts back into time, back into focus, glances at the broken open window, Percy knocking glass remnants out of the frame, "Credence!" Percy summons him and Credence runs, taking his assistance to climb out the window, tripping over the drawer and it's files, broken glass glinting in the night on old manila file folders. Percy takes his help climbing out and they run back for the truck as the door gives and Credence thinks again about premonition, the engine running hot and ready.

Percy grinds the truck into gear, cursing, slamming into reverse and Credence feels his ribs dig into the metal edging of the cabinet drawer, hands going to brace against the ceiling of the cab and the dashboard. Percy jerks the parking brake and the truck swings rough sideways, squealing tires, Credence shuts both his eyes tight.

Time passes, his breathing comes slower, and his heartbeat drags, speeding along dark roads. Credence opens his eyes and it's settling into his broken body, blood in his mouth, tender ribs, starlight and dark water. Newt telling him he's more than this. He's not ready, bleeding out, barely tangible, Percy sharp angles and panic, he's not ready to be unmade again so soon. "Stop." He gasps out as they tear past still lake side, dark trees, empty road stretching ahead. He's not ready.

Percy slows, the truck jerks to a stop and Credence is a ruin when he tries to open the door. Percy curses and jerks open his own door, running through the headlights, he pulls open Credence's door and helps him out of the truck, and where Credence touches, he leaves dark trails like his blood is trying to cling on as much as he is. "What do you need?" Percy's voice comes out like he's begging, a prayer of intention, Credence is moved to his marrow.

"Stay." Credence moves bodily then, presses a wet kiss against Percy's open lips. It's his body that limps into the woods but the vessel isn't any more human than that thing they'd run from.

Percy is good, Percy doesn't listen, he tries, but they're both alike in their desires. Percy finds him in amongst the brambles, up to his knees in corpse-flesh, stinking like some fly-trap flower, dark eyes in the empty moonlight, shadows shafting between trees and Credence cries, she was so nice to him. They were in the same year, he remembers, and she went to Ma's women's Bible study group. Lilian with her blue eyes staring up unseeing and he's ravenous.

This isn't how they found her, Lilian wasn't consumed by a boy between the trees. A hiker tripped over her exposed leg instead, in view of the water, out of view of the road. She'd been dragged there, covered over with brush. When they moved her, her arms had fallen off from decay and Credence is sitting with flesh in his mouth and bile turning his stomach.

Percy kneels beside him in the dark, no scent of fear, no turning disgust save Credence's own. Percy leans him close, wraps his arm around Credence's back. Lilian isn't rotting flesh, she's starlight and brambles, flowering branches, she is soft in Credence's throat. Tender in his stomach.

The hunger abates and Percy lifts him up, cradled and close, safe and sound. The rest of the drive is quiet, Percy brings him in first, sets him down on the couch before bringing in the files. They sit unimportant on the coffee table as Percy pulls him from his ruined clothing, nothing more than a storm lamp for light. 

It is so intimate sitting on the edge of the tub as Percy runs the water on him and pulls away ruined bandages. So much dark blood-ink runs down the drain and when he's soaked through Percy stills and presses his face to Credence's abdomen, a half-choked sound of heartbreak, "I'm not ready." Percy repeats the words turning Credence up inside, "I need you here."

"For tonight I'm here." It's empty comfort, Credence tangles his hand into Percy's short hair and offers it anyway.

They move slow together, fatigue making limbs loose and adrenaline draining into shared pain. Percy drags hands and lips and sluicing water against Credence and in return Credence shudders his hands along hard planes of muscle and pulls Percy till they're both in the shower mostly nude. It's empty of intent, Credence's hunger tamed by fatigue but the press of skin to skin, by God, it is hallowed and Credence is blessed to be given such grace.

More bandages, softer kisses, Percy drags the rough edge of his unshaven jaw against Credence's wrist where wounds haven't torn him open. No meal is enough to heal, how necessary instead is the press of hands and lips, the rolls of gauze, as if Percy is holding him together entirely.

Percy is holding him together entirely. Keeping him from breaking apart, crash of waves, seafoam, dark water dew on springy ground. "Percy," Credence gasps out, hands heavy on his hips, thumbs in the indent there, standing next to the bed, bathroom left behind, "Percy." Credence crashes them together, long arms around broad shoulders, kisses like he knows how. Percy catches his face between his hands and draws him back until Credence is sobbing sharp and needful.

"Lay down sweetheart." It rumbles against Credence's body, settles in his chest and he swallows sharp on a sob, pushes it down eyes too wide and glinting black-sharp human in the still bedroom, Percy's voice shifted so low and decadent and Credence wants to sink into it. He sinks into the bed instead, pushed up to his elbows to watch Percy shift out of his soaked blood-stained jeans.

Sin, Credence falls into watching skin revealed and he wants, oh he wants, and let him want, let the guilt drown itself, he has been wrong for so long, Ma and her church can't touch him here.

That's another boy thinking that, but Credence doesn't mind right now, throat parched. Oh God, Percy smiles at him, teeth glint sharp, oh God.

Hands skim over his legs, part them for broad body to shift between and Credence is panting in breath, his body singing at a frequency almost painful. When Percy's hands are curved around his inner thighs he looks up at Credence and licks his lips nervously, "Okay?"

Credence wants to shout at him just a little bit, just a fraction, broken glass, "Yes." He rasps out instead, face flushed with embarrassment, "Please, you said you wouldn't-" but really all Percy said was he'd be more circumspect, and Credence flounders, wondering if this means he won't taunt him either, and he doesn't know how to say the rest, he doesn't know what to think.

"Oh Credence, I think after today, we've fucking earned some comfort." What Percy does is not comfort, hollows out his mouth and takes the rigid flesh of Credence's hungry need between his lips, and this is not comforting, it is everything Credence has needed for so long.

Percy is good at this, is very good at this and Credence doesn't really have an accurate range of experience to compare it to, but he is pretty sure it's a skill Percy worked for.

Credence would be taking notes if there was anything left of him that is not keening sounds, desperate grasping hands. Percy soothes him with his own hands, wrists dragging behind fingertips even as his mouth tears Credence apart. It isn't violent except it is, and Credence moans broken sounds and Percy hums slick around him.

Credence looks down in one sharp moment of lucidity, mouth open, "Percy," he warns, grasping hands at hair to tug and Percy looks up at him, eyes glinting as mischievous as the devils drawn in woodblock prints, Credence cries out watching Percy drink him down, hips jerking.

"So perfect," Percy's voice is husked deep, it sounds as raw as Credence feels, "So beautiful, fuck, oh sweetheart," Percy drags his jaw gentle against Credence's inner thighs, against his stomach, up further, "So good, you make a man want to pray."

Credence holds to him, he wants messy things, he doesn't want Percy to pray so much, tangled together this is the only ceremony he's willing to take tonight, "I- you-" Credence tries and Percy kisses against his throat, nudges his way there till Credence's head falls back and there, oh he cries, teeth indenting flesh, slower than the times before, worrying and moving righteous things through Credence's pulse. "Percy," he mewls soft, gasping and eyes wide.

Percy takes his hand, careful of bandages, presses it between the strength of his thighs and two rough jerks of his hips, skin to skin, Credence doesn't even get his hand around it, before it's slick and spent, Percy groaning into the grit of his teeth bruising into Credence's skin.

It becomes still between them, shared breath and slowing pulse. Credence's thoughts are quiet and the hunger in him flushed from the system, buried down under the topsoil to rot and be a problem for some later version of himself. Percy cleans them up, checks Credence's bandages, before tucking Credence in against him, quilt brought up around their shoulders, legs tangled together.

"Please don't tell me that can never happen again." Credence whispers, he'll beg if he has to, torn open on the inside, hemorrhaging messy need.

A soft kiss to his forehead, hand tangling into his hair, it could be an affirmation or an apology he doesn't know which till Percy whispers soft and tired against the pillow above his head. "It shouldn't but I think our needs and the damage done denying them outweighs the moral quandary I struggled with before. I'd say in this case if anyone wants to fucking judge me they should be forced to go deal with whatever was in the sheriff's station first." Another kiss, this one against his hair, "We'll go slow and see where we end up."

Credence is too tired to argue about whatever speed Percy thinks they should be moving at, he yawns against Percy's shoulder and finds himself tucked tighter into the brace, safe. He has a sinking feeling Percy's definition of slow is a glacier's pace.

He is almost fully drifting, almost sunken into dreams, when Percy presses his lips to cool brow and tightens his hold, voice soft as can be, gone husky deep with emotion, “I’ll never be ready to lose you, not again.” Credence is too tired to untangle the weft of meaning, again could mean anything now, but mostly what this sounds like to Credence’s fatigued mind is love and fear of loss, he can relate.

Day has broken by the time his sluggish limbs pull him from decadent bed. Percy has set out clothing for him and he dresses slow, hands skittering over the bruises he can assign to Percy’s teeth and grasping hands. The hunger is still in him, drowned under the fullness of content, of pleased smug satisfaction. It is ultimately an ephemeral taste, it won’t last, this triumphant feeling, for one he can already feel his bones growing hollow, can feel the growth of branches and leaf cover in his entrails. If he looks too hard at the veins under his skin, if he cuts himself open past the shallow wounds the trauma of him leaves in physical impression he will hear the song of the wind through black trees, the trickle of water down forgotten falls.

The bedlinens need to be changed and he does that first before going to find Percy, soaking up the impressions of a life he can’t live, sweat in sheets and the scent of Percy’s aftershave pressed into the pillows he then presses his face into until he can bury himself in the scent. It isn’t the culmination of their physical relationship that has him so longing and simultaneously content, it is the remembered matching in longing and contentment of last night’s gentle admission, bittersweet because Credence can’t give Percy what he needs. He can’t stay, not all the way, not how he knows Percy means him to.

Lingering too long on fresh sheets and replacing the quilt he begins to feel old doubt sink in, or at least resurface. Percy is generous and giving, he has been from the first day Credence could remember when Percy had bullied his way into caring for Credence, but this part of their relationship has been driven by Credence, spearheaded the whole way through. There can be no doubt Percy likes to touch him, likes to be touched in turn, but anyone would after so long alone with nothing but conspiracy theories and wayward locals.

There aren’t many locals left Credence fears. He’d feel guilty about this too but he isn’t sure enough of what’s going on to take on the blame unsubstantiated (he still feels a little anxiety that he’s probably connected to it anyway.) No locals means no one for Percy to knock into or rub against, with what inhabitants the island has produced for them pairing themselves up like the end of a romantic comedy. This leaves Credence for Percy, what an abysmal choice to be made.

Credence looks down at himself, sitting on the edge of the bed, long legs and crossed wrists, Percy’s blue flannel rolled up to the elbows and still so baggy. Credence had needed, has needed him so much, ever since arriving there he’d needed him. Fluorescent bathroom lighting and Percy cutting through his bullshit and legitimately caring about him.

Percy deserves better but with a stab of pain and anger, Credence decides he does too, better than loneliness, better than the feeling he’d had when stepping off the ferry, or when Percy had left him at Queenie’s, or when Gellert had turned him out right after Ma had. Emptiness filled up with a spark of anger and that shot through with a thread of love that felt a whole lot like violence and his lips curve and his aching hands clutch the bed and he owns the guilt, lets it fill him up like delicious whiskey, poured down his eager throat a lifetime ago before he went to the slaughter and came back with far too many teeth.

He won’t feel guilty for loving. He won’t let Percy feel guilty either.

His boots make no sound, his impression on old floorboards too light to give weight enough to betray his presence. Percy is sitting on the floor in the living room, camping things strewn about, hiking boots newly cleaned, the little blue tent, canteens and a hunting rifle laid carefully next to the sheriff’s handgun. Credence leans in the darkened hallway opening, watching a moment as Percy checks things off on a little list, his lips curving of their own volition to see his lover (his  _ lover _ his) so invested.

“Did you put food on the list?” Credence draws his attention and his heart does a little jump at the open expression of fondness on Percy’s face when he looks at Credence. Except really, nothing has changed, nothing at all. Percy has always looked at him like this, Credence just now can finally believe in it, how hollow his own belief in them, in Percy, and in himself, but it’s easier now.

Percy looks back at the list, “Yeah, sandwiches for lunch, chili for dinner and ashcakes.” Percy pats the open space on the floor next to him and Credence curls up in it, thigh to thigh, knees brushing.

“What’s an ashcake?”

“Horrible bread made in an open fire over the coals, you kind of brush it off and then break it open and eat the inside.”

“That sounds disgusting,” Credence laughs softly, so soft and Percy gently digs his elbow into Credence’s side and it’s lovely and nice, “Did you learn that in Boy Scouts?”

“I’ll have you know the Scouts taught me many life lessons including how to suck a cock so you can shut that pretty mouth right up.” Percy nudges him again and hands him a shoe box, “Try these on, I pinched them a few months back from one of the houses we tried to get into for Tina.”

Credence is obedient and undoes the laces on them, checking number before pulling the left shoe on first, “Were you really in the Boy Scouts?”

“There is a reason I absolutely fucking hate hiking and camping, food poisoning in the middle of nowhere with the knowledge that you have to carry yourself out is not fun to experience at any age but less so when one is in Venturing at sixteen and wants to impress their twenty something Eagle scout leader.”

“Is that where you, ah-”

Percy snorts his amusement, “No, Harry was a heartbreaker but ultimately a giver over a taker.”

“I didn’t go to boy scouts but our church had it’s own youth camping. I didn’t much like it the few times Ma let us go.”

“City boys the both of us, which begs the question, why do you want to hike out into the middle of nowhere to say goodbye to me again?” Percy is too sharp and smart, and Credence can’t meet his gaze. He laces the shoes and they fit perfectly, bites his lip when Percy reaches out to take his chin in gentle hand, “Credence?”

“I want you to myself I don’t want the ghosts to hear and he never liked it there so maybe it’ll just be us, just the two of us.”

Percy ducks down till they’re meeting eyes, till he holds Credence’s gaze solid, “They’re not us, and they weren’t us last night either.”

Credence leans in and kisses him, he can’t not, not with Percy looking at him like that with his smile all soft and his eyes bright. He always starts it, and that’s fine, Percy promised him a kiss. Whiskey is on the list between lantern and sleeping bag, it feels poetic in its placement. When Percy pulls away his eyes are closed for a moment still and Credence watches the emotion track slow across his face, longing and subdued hunger, Credence’s own awakens a turning coil in his stomach and lower and the sharp pang of it opens Percy’s eyes up wide. He brushes his fingers against Credence’s cheekbones, against his parted lips, takes his face in warm palm and just watches as the unholy becomes holy under his touch. God moves through them, there is no sin he can taste when he looks at Percy.

“Pancakes?” Percy offers.

Credence shakes his head, “I’ll make us some peanut butter sandwiches, we should go, I slept too long.”

“Hardly, you needed the rest.”

It’s just time slipping away from him, his empty body torn apart more and more, and what he needs is right here, and it’s also out there in the woods. There are pieces of him strewn through the trees and set between bitter biting teeth.

Percy shrugs then, “But you’re probably right, I don’t want to have to make camp after dark.”

Peanut butter sandwiches with what’s left of Percy’s stocks, it’s not much and the peanut butter has separated from the oil so that Credence has to stir it back together before he can spread it. It’s a sharp reminder standing in the oddly dusty kitchen stirring up the emulsion of a different time, the cheap peanut butter in the soup kitchen no one ever liked. Marked with church labels and bitter, ash-like. He licks the butter knife clean, and despite the age there is no ash-taste. Sweet and sticky instead and nothing like the memories of gray mornings making hundreds of sandwiches for hungry strangers, his own stomach empty ocean waves.

He is unceremoniously, ungracefully, shoving his face when he brings the plate stacked high back out and Percy is packing a backpack with assorted odds and ends.

Percy looks up at him and smiles so soft, “We’ll see if the store is open and if it’s not I’ll jimmy the lock.”

“For a former officer of the law, you break into a lot of places and then steal things from them.” Credence nudges his leg with his new hiking boot. The fit is perfect but he’s not looking forward to breaking them in on untended trails.

“Looting is illegal, don’t do that.” Percy points at him before he shoves a hunting knife in sheath to the clasp already waiting on his bag, “I’m retired now I guess, anyway, you’re right. Former. It’s not hurting anyone, there isn’t anyone left to hurt, I’ll shove some money in the register.”

“I’m sorry.”

Percy shrugs, “It’s just money.”

“No, that’s not what I meant, I’m sorry I reminded you of before.”

Percy looks at him pained, gutted open, he tries to smile, “I know Credence, I was deflecting.”

“Oh.” Credence looks down nervous, he’s still holding the plate of sandwiches, guilt turns up the hunger in him. He wishes everything wasn’t so connected to how empty he feels, wishes fear, anxiety, pain, rage, wishes they weren’t all so tangled up in that overarching hunger. It was easier to ignore them when they weren’t so physical.

Percy stands, graceful as a great big cat, padded footfalls, and he takes the plate from Credence and sets it down before drawing him into a hug. “It was worth the pain, to see you smile for me.” Because Credence never could have before, never could have opened his eyes to Percy, Officer Graves, touching a photograph of a boy and haunted by the ghost of him.

Credence can’t bring himself to smile right now but he leans himself into the embrace and breathes and everything settles, everything goes still, perfect.

“Bag up those sandwiches, you can eat them on the trail.” Percy directs him and he quickens to obey.

They follow the same route Percy had taken before after stopping at the store, but now there are so many additional creeks opened up by thawing snow. Percy helps him cross them, pushes fallen logs for them to balance over when the water is deep. Credence stops frozen, watching his reflection in amongst sunken forest floor. His face is flushed with excursion, his hair tracks down to his chin, his eyes are sharp and they meet his own reflection and he doesn’t recognize himself, the bearing, the confidence, for the span of time it takes him to take another step forward and then the water shifts, no longer quite so still, his hair falls forward.

He is different, the ghost lives in the steps he leaves behind but it’s not the ghost of this place, it isn’t the boy standing in the doorway of an old photograph, it’s the ghost of the boy who served Tina coffee and dreamed of a day when someone would love him enough to save him like Jesus saved them all. He didn’t get saved that time, hands pulled him from the water a continent away and he came to himself, as he is now, fear and frustration and also acceptance. Laid down in the shape of himself carved into the woods.

He smiles, at his reflection, at the stretch of his muscles under skin, at the tearing of flesh and the hunger never satiated. Percy almost falls into the water and flails out to balance himself, cursing loud and sharp to echo through dense plant-life. Credence laughs and covers his mouth and apologizes but he’s still laughing when Percy shoots him a tepid glare.

“If I turn my ankle you’ll be sorry.”

Credence smiles at him so soft, a whisper of humor, “I’ll dote on you and build a shrine around your fallen body, feed you little sweet buds of flowers and succulent honey stolen from hives, drip dew to quench your thirst from my fingertips.  _ For he satisfies the thirsty, and fills the hungry with good things _ . Psalm one oh seven, nine.” Credence draws out the numbers and watches with soft delight as Percy’s eyes go dark and his mouth dry, licked lips and steady attention.

Percy coughs to clear his throat and steadies himself back for the trail and Credence follows, soft deep laughter and full of life, God, he feels so alive.

They stop deep in, Percy plopping down on a large boulder covered over with moss, a sleeping giant of impressions and soft lichen. Credence sits on the ground near enough and catches the sandwich bag Percy tosses him. It’s still early in the day and he watches Percy flop backwards till he’s laying out on the rock in what little sunlight dense forest cover affords. “I hate hiking.”

Credence smiles faintly, bites into soft bread, “I’m sorry.”

“You wanted this don’t apologize, it’s worth it if it gives you what you want.” Percy pats the stone next to him and Credence crawls over to perch on it next to him, it’s not really big enough for both of them but Credence doesn’t mind having to press close and Percy hums contentment, “How are you feeling?”

Credence shrugs, mouth full, he’s not even particularly hungry but this feels like a preventative measure. He finishes chewing,  “Not tired, or-” Credence starts when Percy reaches up and catches him by the back of the neck, pulls him down, just a little bit, a foot of space between them.

“And tell me young Credence Barebone, how many ghosts are there following us?” Percy’s tone is deep and playful, Credence drops the three bites left of his sandwich and doesn’t feel that bad about it, bracing over Percy, soft greenery cushioning his abused hands. “Can they hear us?”

“Are you making fun of me for being haunted?” Credence lets his head drop forward and his hair comes down, featherlight, a curtain around them, there isn’t a foot of space remaining anymore.

“I want to make sure you’re the only one who can hear this.”

Credence freezes up, a hand so gentle against his cheek, and he nods carefully, leans into the touch, trying to read Percy’s face for a glimpse of what is to come, there are no answers there that he can read.

“I want to take you away from here. When it’s all done, I want you to come with me. We won’t go to New York, or Seattle, we’ll go wherever you want or nowhere in particular, but I want you with me. I’ll do anything to keep you, but if I can’t, if you can’t leave? I’ll stay here too.”

Credence doesn’t kiss him even though he wants to, he hides his face against Percy’s t-shirt and shudders into the arms that hold him close. “I shouldn’t want to keep you, it’s selfish.”

“Fuck that sweetheart, be as selfish as you want.” Percy kisses his hair. “I’m yours, through and through. Can’t get rid of me now.” Percy holds him tighter, “Gods I’m so sorry Credence, I fucked things up so bad.”

“It’s okay, it’s going to be okay.” Credence promises.

“Should have taken you and ran that first day, you know I wanted to, second I saw you. I just, I knew this place was bad for you, fuck you were so lost, I just wanted to help you but I couldn’t even help myself enough to fucking leave.” Percy takes his weight when Credence goes limp against him, cool breeze through the trees and Percy’s soothing warmth. “I got into the box this morning.”

Credence freezes up just a little bit and then goes loose again under the impression of calming hands, the heat Percy gives off lulling him to relax once more, “What did you find?”

“Not a lot, but something bad enough. We’re not going back there, we’re not going back to the Church again.”

“Okay.” Credence feels like saying this might be a sin, it might be lying, but he wants to appease Percy, wants to soothe the fear he can taste in the air. It works well enough, Percy breathes out a soft sigh against his hair, squeezes him once. “Will you tell me what you found?”

“Eventually.”

Credence is thinking that eventually means never if Percy can help it, means when they’re far away from this island and these woods if possible. “Okay.” Credence agrees again, and it too feels like a form of lie, but more that he’s going to find out whether Percy wants him to or not. Ghosts in their echoes and Percy can’t keep him safe, no matter how desperately he wants to.

They get back on the trail and Percy doesn’t lose his balance again but he does get them lost, coming out on the river far down from where he’d made camp before. Credence can’t taste the impression of blood this far down, not with seasons between them, but he knows it’s wrong. Percy takes stock of the river, wider than before, gorged up on melting snow, it is freezing cold when Credence sticks his hand in it. “Don’t drink from the water.” Percy warns him.

Credence washes his face in it, wet hair, wet bandages on his hands, wet lips when he presses them to Percy’s darkened throat, rough hair against his tender skin.

“Shit you’re freezing.” Percy barks a laugh and Credence laughs too. “I mean it, don’t drink that water.”

“Percy, I don’t think a parasite is going to matter by tomorrow.” It’s meant to be teasing but it sobers things up, and Credence tilts his head down to the hands that touch his face like worship, he is the prayer between open palms.

“You’re getting hungry.”

Credence scrunches up his nose in polite distaste, “I don’t want anymore peanut butter.”

Percy laughs and kisses him on the nose, it is ridiculously heart-warming and Credence smiles soft and feels the warmth of gentle affection sink down to the empty reaches of him. “Okay, okay let’s get up river and I’ll make chili.”

Falling into step behind Percy gives him the luxury to watch muscles work, mouth watering, face flushed hot when Percy glances back at him an amused look on his face, "What?" Credence asks absolute innocence, burning up sin. Let the Devil take him. It's not fair that Percy needs him this way, needs to know him like this to know his hunger to be steady, laid bare before him, not fair this place gives things Credence didn't give permission to take.

Percy snorts bemusement and turns back around, heavy pack and shifting hips, jeans tight on strong legs. Credence averts his gaze lest his hunger consume them, or God smite him down, either seems likely at this point.

He can taste the blood long gone before Percy stops them, the impression of a night so long ago sinks into Credence and he closes his eyes, head tipped back to breathe open mouth - great gulping breaths - and a hum of contentment fills him. They are far enough from fallen body, from little girl lost. The ghosts who follow in their trails dislike the woods this deep, the clear water and river-rocks. Percy drops his pack by the ring of rocks faithfully remaining after season's shift.

"Go find us some sticks and dry kindling, I'll clean up the growth." Percy directs him and Credence wanders off into the treeline, close enough to stay in line of sight.

Credence is very bad at this he quickly discovers, everything is wet leaves and lichen. He comes back with half an armful of tree refuse after ten minutes of hunting. Out of breath and hungrier than before, face flushed already into embarrassment. Percy looks up from his crouch around the mostly cleaned camp and laughs soft and breathy. "Here, just sit down." Percy pats the cleared ground, "I'll go foraging."

He settles down and then leans back against the pack, head pillowed. The sky is still bright clear above, that decadent kind of sunlight that promises dark sooner than one expects but it will linger as long as it can, grasping fingers through trees close but not oppressive. The sound of Percy humming tunelessly to himself and the current of the river. Credence doesn’t start when the hooves set through the rocky ground, familiar black blown eyes peer down at him, antlers freshly shed blood-red, the deer noses at his pockets.

Credence wriggles breath held, pulls the second bag of sandwich out of the pocket of his borrowed flannel, the deer licks the peanut butter off bread when Credence holds the sandwich open for it. Percy stops humming, which is the only way Credence knows he’s caught sight of them. The deer gums up wet bread and then turns, going as quiet as it came.

“What the shit.” Percy whispers, dumping a lot more wood into the circle of stones than Credence ever could have found.

“He had to come say hello, it’d been awhile I guess. I saw him my first day here.” Credence pushes up to sit, scrubbing his hands against his jeans. 

Percy drops to his knees heavy weight collapsing at Credence's side, knees up against Credence's side. He reaches out and presses his hand against Credence's cheek and then cards his hand through his hair, taking a good handful of it and grounding them both with the press, the hold, "You're amazing."   
  
The praise takes Credence off guard, he flushes delicately no dark florid bloom from heat and excursion, eyes wide. The hunger blossoms again and Percy feels it like flower petals brushing skin, Credence watches it open up in Percy as it does in him, a strange mirror he's getting used to, and if anything gets Percy to keep looking at him he'll give this, this imposition, to keep these eyes on him.   
  
"Chili for my amazing boy." Percy murmurs like bubbling brook, Credence feels his attention draw slowly away, slow enough that it lessens the blow, his pride at further praise and possession mixed up with a dreamlike haze. The forest settles back around him and he closes his eyes and rests, focusing on the sounds around them, and of Percy starting the fire and opening tin cans.   
  
Credence must fall asleep for the next thing he knows is dim dusk light and Percy's hands against his shoulders gently shaking him awake. Fond smile on handsome lips and pleased dark eyes. "Dreaming?"   
  
Sitting up Credence feels the world shift startlingly and he realizes it is more accurate than he'd thought the question at first. The trees are hung with hundreds of dead shapes, horrible impressions far enough out from the ring of their fire's light that he can't make out faces. Percy puts a bowl into his hands and it's filled with a still-beating heart, a sheriff's badge. When he looks up it's not Percy kneeling next to him but his Ma.   
  
"You're becoming far more trouble than it was worth taking you in." It is a regurgitated line, Ma had said this or something like this a hundred times. "You're good for so very little Credence."   
  
He pokes at the heart, worried at the thrum of it beneath his fingers, they come away smeared red. "You're not real."   
  
"Do you think that saves you from anything?"   
  
Percy shakes him awake and the eyes above him are not honey-dark and pleased but worried, apprehensive, "You were having a nightmare."   
  
It is later than dusk, no soft hazy darkness, nothing to hide faces in the trees, but there are no faces in the trees anyway. "Sorry." Credence rubs at his eyes and sits up, hunched in on himself.   
  
"Don't fret it sweetheart, you wanna try and eat something?" Percy puts his hand behind Credence, helps him to stay sitting, gentle and careful and Credence leans into him, the scent of Ma's perfume still haunting him, it's better here against Percy's neck with woodsmoke and sweat.   
  
"Okay." But it still takes a minute for them to break apart, for Percy to let him go and move back to the fire and the pot resting on warming coals.

They eat, or Credence eats numb and disjointed, his body working opposite the turning nausea and oppression, the weight that slides like a cloak over his shoulders and keeps pressing down heavier. Rocks on the witch he read about in school, the weight gets no confession of guilt from him either.

What he can taste is later, three bowls in and the food lays welcome in his empty stomach and settles him. Spicy, tomatoes, hearty sausage. “Oh, this is good.”

Percy snorts his bemusement and ruffles his hair up where he sits next to Credence on the ground, “So little faith you have in my abilities.”

A flush, “All you could make was pancakes, I know it, I was there.”

“We never went camping.”

Credence frowns then, “You hate camping though.”

“I can be good at it and still dislike it intensely.” Percy picks a bit of grass from Credence’s jacket shoulder, “Where did your gloves go?” The change in conversation starts Credence and he struggles to follow the track switch, Percy reaches out and takes the bowl away only to set it down and take up Credence’s hands in his own, turning them around to track rough fingertips against the bandaging.

It had been so long ago, a birthday present, what proved to be a parting gift. “I tucked them into a loose brick at the Newspaper to keep them safe.”

Percy hums an affirmation that he’d heard but his attention seems to be in the play of firelight in the darkness over pale flesh.

Credence is slipping away in parts but it’s not physicality, not with Percy here mooring him to the dock of his flesh, just pieces of his attention drifting, more and more of him called back to the spongy loam of the woods, to breathing plant life and buried bones.

“You promised me another gift.” Credence reminds quietly, apprehensive. He knows he shouldn’t have asked, that putting words to it, and that leaving Percy to begin with had changed their relationship far past what Percy had wanted, what Percy found comfortable. Comfortable wasn’t always right, but Credence hadn’t respected Percy’s boundaries when he’d felt his heart break. Guilt grabs at him just as his own need does, conflicting emotions. He wants Percy, he’s had Percy in parts, but it’s never going to be enough.

He’d told himself he wouldn’t let himself feel guilty for this but it’s so hard to stop when Percy looks up from his hand to his face and the fondness bleeds too keen for the first fraction of a second, for the space of time it takes Percy to really see him. There is so much pain in him, in them, in the spaces between them and Credence can only think to close the distance, to eat up the sorrow till there is nothing but them left. 

“I did.” Percy nods his head to the side to the tent set up at some point, probably when Credence was dozing off before dinner. The flap is lifted open, and the top is pulled back to reveal the mesh netting above, the canopy of trees above that, the heavens further up. (If there is a Heaven, if the Lord knows compassion, then Credence has already found his slice of it.)

Credence watches him from the threshold of the tent as he ties up the food with a rope, pulling it high above the camp. When Percy joins him beside the tent the temperature of the night has dropped and the fire is in embers. Percy shows him how to get into the tent by example and Credence crawls in next to him in the dark, watches with glitter-sharp eyes as Percy moves in the darkness, kneeling next to Credence to help him take off his boots. 

“You don’t have to kiss me, if you really don’t want to.” Credence allows the self doubt to overcome him, nerves maybe, Percy is so gentle in his actions, lacing undone methodically, hands carefully cradling. Boots tucked into the corner near the door flap Percy pushes Credence back onto the sleeping bag, and he goes with a huff of breath, eyes widening at the open sky above him and then Percy braced before that.

“I’ve never not wanted to do that.” A gentle hand that smells like chili spice brushes Credence’s hair back from his face and everything is soft, impermanent, but necessary, he feels like he’d die without this. Percy straddles his narrow hips again and looks down at him all soft edges and age. He is beautiful to Credence, greying hair and dark eyes, subdued humor under a mask of desperation and oh, but Credence feels that desperation too.

Percy leans forward slowly, hands on either side of Credence’s head, behind the broad width of his shoulders the sheer mesh of the tent reveals the silhouette of trees against a clear night, bright heaven’s light halos Percy above him and Credence thinks again there will never be something as holy as this man for him. Sacrilegious, but honest. “I shouldn’t have pressured you.”

The smile he gives Credence is sweet and painless, a little bemused. “Do you still want me to kiss you?”

“Please.” Credence breathes it out, a sigh, a hunger, Percy can taste it in him, but Credence cannot see in this darkness the way his lover’s eyes grow darker for him, over him, by the need of him. He can feel it though, the heat of Percy above him, the weight as he shifts forward, the strength required to brace himself on his palms and lean down, till they are chest to chest, “Like this?” Percy asks.

Credence could not care less how it transpires, or rather he would take this any way Percy wanted to give it to him. “Please.” But more, it is safe here, under Percy, and a mirror to a year before when Percy had bled to bring him back and Credence had become shadow beneath him.

Chapped lips touch his cheek, but Percy isn’t teasing him, isn’t being cruel. They touch again against the brittle bone around his eye and Credence closes his own against the closeness, the vision of Percy above him burned into the black. “Like this?” Percy asks again, shifting his hips, a hard rough drag but slow, moving to brace further on his arms, the shifting of muscle a play of physicality Credence can’t see but oh, but oh can he feel it and it moves him on a spiritual level.

“Percy.” Credence keens, high pitched, wanting. But Percy can feel it too, he never needed to voice it but it’s there between them, open and hungry. Percy braces, shifts, leaves his weight on the point where their hips meet, his body bows, his teeth pinch sharp against Credence’s throat. He likes it there and Credence like him there, delights in the impression of bruise not left by the woods, not left by his messy emotions, not left by someone else unwanted and without permission. Percy works his skin till the pain has Credence gasping, clutching at him by the shoulders, eyes shut tight and hips shivering. He gasps a sharp sound when Percy finally pulls back, when Percy presses soft touch of lips to the anger of his desire blossoming on Credence’s skin.

“I want all of you.” Percy says it like it’s a curse, Credence curls up into the pain of knowing Percy still hurts to love him, still blames himself for Credence’s youth.

“I’m eighteen now.” Or maybe he’s much older, maybe he’s more the boy in the church, the one here and not back in New York. Maybe he’s dead. He was dead, age has so little meaning to him right now, but he knows to Percy it means pain and injustice.

“Okay, still morally-” Percy begins but Credence puts his hand up between them, covers Percy’s lips before the argument can spill out.

“You told me we earned some comfort.”

Percy looks down at him fondly and nods. Credence draws his hand back carefully but Percy remains quiet.

“I need your comfort tonight Percy, I need you.”

It is heat then again, Percy’s weight, and the slow slide of pressure where they meet at hips and then teeth against his throat. It’s soft breath between them growing labored, Credence panting and there still isn’t a kiss but Credence thinks hazy hot, it doesn’t matter as much with Percy above him like this. A release, a further indent of teeth, a tide in and out, pressure and relief. Credence is keening by the time there is a half-ring around his throat, a necklace made of himself and Percy’s own kind of hunger. 

He trembles bone deep when Percy shifts again, releases the pressure of their bodies to lay beside him in the dark, hands reach out and shift him around, till they’re laying face to face in the small tent. They breathe, they come down from spiraling highs, Credence focuses on the sound of the wind through the trees outside, the breath of Percy beside him in counterbalance. He’s not meant for this place, Credence isn’t meant for permanence and a place, when the dark water calls him. This place was never an island but it is now, lost in time, a lake and a river, the falls. Dark water like ink and logs floating white-bone stripped down polluted waterways. They are the island here, two people in the still woods, and Credence reaches forward to twine their hands together, an island strong enough to whether the storm.

“I love you.” Credence confesses. It’s not want and it’s not need, it’s something more terrible.

Percy doesn’t return it, but he closes the gap slow and careful, presses open lips to Credence’s. It is not how he imagined Percy would kiss. It isn’t rough and biting, not the pressure of teeth against abused skin. Soft and delicate, endless and giving. Percy kisses like love, returned, returned.

It is what Credence had wanted and more, intimate in a way nothing before had been, and a confirmation of everything he’s hungered for. He is wanted, he is loved, he is needed. Percy needs him, and it breaks Credence apart, his cheeks grow ruddied with tears and he nuzzles soft into the kiss, into the brush of lips against lips. Percy pulls away gently, far enough back that Credence can’t chase him, and he looks concerned at tear stained face.    
  
“What’s wrong sweetheart?” So soft, so decadent, Credence trembles and presses till he can hide his face against Percy’s chest.    
  
“I’m happy. I’m just, I’m happy.” And he has been drowning in his sadness in this depression for so long, for much longer than the shoreline of this river can remember, for longer than the hollow of his bones now more bird nest and broken shells than marrow. He’d forgotten what happiness could feel like, and while that darkness hasn’t lifted, it’s still breath in his rotting lungs to taste happiness. True contentment.

Percy loosens their joined hands and that’s fine because he moves to put his arms around Credence instead and he holds him close, presses soft kisses against his hair. “I love you too Credence.” But he already knows.

The cage of his body can sustain no more, it gives him no reprieve, it does not allow them one last night before their parting. Whatever plans Percy had are cast away. Credence fades to vapor, fog on the water, he leaves Percy alone in the tent holding nothing, a mournful response to a declaration so gentle.

Percy keeps his hands open in the space beside him and his shadow lays warm in the dark, unholy and alert against the taste of something coming in the air. But this is no storm, and the shadow knows, what has begun he has no defence against.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ink and Smoke would have had four parts, the third part of which is the last one I did any earnest writing on. So we have two more parts after this, if you've read this far good on you man, shit is gonna get even weirder strap in.
> 
> also this was written in 2017 before the second movie came out so uh... fuck what JKR did with Queenie's characterization im not about that life


	4. Ink and Smoke Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> woops i vanished, yo boy poly back with words for you to read and a reminder that this is an abandoned work pls do not shank me
> 
> Oh hey uh... uh this chapter has sex in it, fjdsbhd ahaha enjOY

_The Second Year, Summer._

Queenie moves into the little set of rooms above the bakery the week after Percy drags himself out of the woods and back to a semblance of civilization. It feels false, everything does, shopfronts now dusty far past a few weeks, instead there are years and years of it piling up inside, spiderwebs and cicada shells. As the months pass and Spring burns into Summer, Credence turns nineteen in shadow and tree-song, Queenie settles into routine again, waitressing alone at the restaurant and keeping track of the townsfolk who stumble in for Percy’s perusal later.

“Are these even regional?” Percy asks Newt who is helping him loot the trading goods store. They’re not the only ones left on the island but it’s a wonder if they see another living person for days. Chloe who used to be up bright and early every day to ring up someone’s soda drifts aimless some nights along the lakeside until Percy goes out with his flashlight and tells her kindly to go home.

She’s not here now to see them break into the store next door at least.

Newt studies the cicada shells, so numerous, moves the flashlight from where he should be pointing it to aid in Percy’s traversal of the store. The husks are dull, shucked skin, brown and gold. “They don’t usually go past lower Oregon, there must have been an unseasonably warm spring one year.”

Percy snaps his fingers and coughs annoyance until Newt swings the torch back around to illuminate the tins of camp fuel, briskets of charcoal, and bottles of lighter fluid. Percy grabs an armful of things and they leave, back into the sweltering heat. They take shelter where they can under the cover of pine needle heavy shop awnings. They wave in at Queenie as they pass and then carry along to Percy’s truck, parked at the bakery.

Tina is standing in the back of it for extra height and beating tree cover off the awning above the door with a broom. Jacob is largely lucid today and seems to be kneading bread in the window. He has a chipper wave for them when they come up but then drops his attention back to the dough, ever dutiful to his craft.

“Newt,” Tina starts, stops, sucks in a gasped breath, “Are you sure,” she swipes a killer undercut at the waste and a bunch of needles sweep off the awning and drop wet to the ground next to them, “You don’t want to do the cookout with us?”

Newt nods, skirting his gaze to the lake, “I’m going to go fishing, but I hope you all have fun.” He tries for chipper, drops the flashlight into the truckbed like it’s burning him.

“You mean you’re going to go sit out on the water without a pole for hours.” Percy challenges him and Tina has to sweep her broom down and get between them before Newt tries to vanish again.

“It’s fine Newt.” She smiles at him, “Mister Graves just likes to pretend he’s in charge you know. Survival situation and everything.”

“He’s pissy because I shot a deer.” Percy leans on the side of his truck, the metal is flame-hot, sinks into his shadow, flickering against sweat damp skin. “Tell me Mister Scamander, what you expect us to eat? Now that the diner is running out of supplies?”

“We should leave.” Newt skirts around the truck preemptively before Percy can do violence. “Credence would come!”

This isn’t a new argument, it’s a third repetition in so many weeks, rats on a sinking ship, and Newt skids on the gravel as Percy strides toward him like a big cat but Tina puts her foot, or broom, down again and hits Percy in the chest with the damp bristles. “Percival!” She shouts, “Go help Queenie. Newt, let me test your boat for you before you try and drown yourself again.”

Percy leaves his truck outside the bakery but walking to the diner does little to cool his temper, rather it just makes him hotter. Queenie glances at him coming in and waves him toward the back. “Go sit in the office honey, you look frightful.”

The office has a window unit going full blast, little metallic strips of plastic dance in front of the vent. Percy sits in front of it and braces himself against the desk beside the window. He looks tired here in the dark, and strained far past Newt’s arguments and the summer heat. They’ve started a garden but none of them but Newt know much about local wildlife and he’s taciturn about it, about changing habitats and clearing land.

Percy isn’t a good hunter, he’s going on half remembered Boy Scout badges and what books he’s found in the moldy library. But supplies running out are the least of their worries if the power cuts.

With summer storms on the horizon there is a risk of a tree felling a line. Without refrigeration, without light, well, they’re all ill prepared to deal with roughing it like that.

A cool hand alights hot skin, but there is no one there for Percy to see, “Don’t tell me he has a point.” Percy grits out, frustration, sweat cold now, condensation against the air conditioner.

Credence is more ephemeral than physical but he has enough impressions to place in this darkened cold place. He can’t speak yet, his jaw hangs unlatched, broken, his bones protrude from the joints between them, his flesh cut open like sacrificial offerings. Percy doesn’t look at him like he sees that, like Credence is anything but beautiful, although he’s careful where he touches. Credence settles into the shadow of his lap, the dip between his hips, tucks himself against broad chest. A moment stolen.

“Queenie won’t leave without you, and Tina won’t leave without Queenie, and Newt won’t leave without Tina.” Credence tells him what they both already know, when he’s physical enough to mend together his face. “And you won’t leave without me.” The guilt is a heavy weight but Credence has to take it, has to bear it. He accepts the tightening of Percy’s arms around him too, pain tethering him to reality and turning him whole, or as close to it as he can get right now. When Percy drops a kiss to his shoulder Credence breathes a sigh of relief, a reprieve from the pain just to have his kindness. It’s still selfish of him to chain them together.

“There is nothing out there for me without you there with me.” Percy whispers. “They’ll go when they need to, Queenie will go when it’s the best thing for Jacob.”

Credence isn’t sure if he’s right, or if she’d just send Jacob with Newt and promise to come after. There are loyalties far deeper than simple loveliness. “I wish I could go to the barbecue.” Is what Credence chooses to say instead.

“I’ll leave the offerings as I usually do my little godling.” Percy nuzzles the back of his neck, does badly at repressing the shudder of revulsion when his lips brush exposed spine. Credence keens pain but it isn’t at the nerve endings fraying hot-fire. “No, it’s not you, I love you.” Percy reassures him, squeezes his arms around the hollow of his chest till the jut of Credence’s ribs compress against the lichen growing in the hollow of his insides.

“You’re disgusted by me.” Credence accuses, laughs because he’s losing himself, hopeless, he’d been so happy once, he’d been so happy.

“I’m disgusted by me, not you.” 

Credence doesn’t get to ask him for clarification, he has to settle back into the man’s shadow, weak and tepid. The woods are too alive, too angry, they take from him his strength and lost voices call out to him but he’s afraid now to follow their stories into the trees, into musty shops, into burned down churches. There is too much to know.

Percy can’t cook, so he doesn’t man the grill, leaves it to Queenie and Jacob instead. He walks the line of trees around the old campsite. There are a few ruined trailers on the outskirts of the campgrounds, an office that hasn’t been manned since Percy got here. The tourists, the ones that actually came on purpose, would sometimes pitch tent out here but without the ferry running there are no other fires burning but their own, no other tents but the big one Queenie pulled out of her attic like a magic trick.

There is a smaller one for Jacob but it’s clear by dusk Tina is going to be the one using it instead, and also pulling it a good distance from the love birds. Jacob, jovial, cracking jokes and turning hotdogs, has Queenie smitten. “If this were an earlier time they’d be married by now.” Percy relates to the shadow stretching up the old office wall. He can hear them still in the far distance, Tina’s sharper voice groaning something but she’d be softer if Newt were here.

His shadow tracks unbidden against his wrist and Percy watches the ring to form, the impression is nothing, just the breeze against his skin, it flickers away then. “Was that a proposal?” Percy smiles a fond twist of lips and braces himself either side of the door. One swift kick causes dry rot to give in, the door jerks open and hangs in pieces from rusted metal fastenings.

Inside the attendant has hung himself from the ceiling fan, his uniform rotted through with mold spores. Something inhuman hisses, small and traumatic, it runs on inumerous legs away from the shadow that would consume it. 

Percy walks fearless over hundreds of forgotten sign in sheets and rental agreements, there is an ancient television of the black and white variety, a calendar set on May 1983, and a fridge open with dried up condiment jars and dusty cans of coke inside. Percy hunches down to poke through the papers on the ground while his shadow stretches long, longer still, curls and coils, flickers back to the second room of the shack. 

The creature is gone now, no sign of exit but the scents here are just stagnant time, mold spores and termite dust. A family of mice one lived in the mattress on old cot but there is nothing living left to breathe out and disturb the rest of the dead.

When curious shadow returns the body has become dust too, crumbled around from the noose that had for so many years secured it’s remains. Percy taps at one of the pieces of paper, “Pepper Olis. She was one of the ones found in the woods. Says here she was camping for a month and her campsite was paid out by the Sheriff's Department afterward.”

“Mister Graves?” Tina’s voice tremors like fear but she never shows it, holds fast, fists clenched, ready to throw a punch or get in the way of one. Her eyes track to the noose, to the sizable pile of dust and clothing on the floor beneath it, to the paper in Percy’s hand. “If you were going investigating I would have been glad to come!” Tina scowls, he had left her with the love birds, she’s clearly annoyed.

“Here.” He hands her over the paperwork when they exit. “Where do you think the department would have impounded her belongings?” He asks when she’s looked over the old ink and careful handwriting. “The station isn’t big enough by far.”

Tina hands him back the papers and follows him along the trail, hot summer evening causing their return to slow to a leisurely crawl, not the quick policeman’s route of a pace they usually took walking together. Behind them their shadow flickers, upturns stray leaves, listens. “Probably the storage facility up on the radio tower road.”

It was the opposite end of the island from Percy’s cabin, but when they’d checked keys there before none of the doors had budged. Percy isn’t looking for locks to match the key in his pocket anymore though. Credence’s little spanish doll is worn from Percy rubbing it like a talisman, but answers are more important now.

They haven’t been back to the sheriff’s station since Jack’s death but Percy had gone close enough to siphon gas out of the old truck parked out front before the tank could rust away. The metal had come off against his hands, the rot or consumption, the disease festering inside the station had claimed the things connected to it too. How long had Jack kept the secrets in those dark rooms to himself, or had he even known of them until the end? Dead long silent, locked behind shut doors.

_And they go into the woods._

“We’ll have to break in and see if we can’t find a manifest or some kind of paperwork later in the week.” Percy invites Tina along this time which appeases her enough to give him an extra large helping of potato salad later.

He still takes his plate to the dark trees and eats among them, sausage made from the deer he’d hunted for them, potato salad with the last of the potatoes from the diner, fresh rolls from Jacob’s bakery. He portions out a bit of each, leaves it on his plate and then lays it between the trees, his offering. Credence doesn’t think he’s a holy thing, and it’s sacrilegious how Percy calls him his godling, but it doesn’t dismay him so much as it should when Percy leaves him prayer, lips to shadow in the palms of his hands and tells him how much he misses him.

There is an amount of pity for Tina but not enough for Credence to chastise Percy for leaving her to weather the night alone in Jacob’s tent. He is ultimately selfish, nothing heavenly about him, and if he is a god-like being it’s not a nice kind. Percy rolls out the sleeping bag in the back of his truck, beds down and then he holds up the flap, arm inviting curve, and Credence slides in against his side, more pine needles and moss than boy, bone-white bleached summer sun and bird nests. Percy sighs contentedly to feel the weight and right now that’s all that matters.

It’s not safe here, it’s not safe anywhere. Credence can’t believe he ever thought there was nothing in these woods to fear. For every retraction he makes, every step in reverse, the woods around them grow angrier still. His flesh is not his own. The wind through trees, the dark lake water, _remember_ they whisper, _remember._

He just wants to go home to Percy.

It’s actually probably kinder to Tina leaving her where she is, Credence can’t control the shape of his body, too messy, too distracted, too spiritual. Not enough physicality until Percy’s hand strokes down his back and teaches his spine how to curve properly again, not coil like a snake. Credence remembers how to sigh and nudges his cheek against Percy’s chest, head pillowed there.

“I’m right here, we’re okay.” Percy promises him.

Where even is here, and how can Percy say that? But Credence hangs his faith on the rise and fall of his chest, the body heat Percy shares with him.

“Why are you disgusted by yourself?” Credence whispers and it’s more cicada song, unseasonable, sweet.

Percy squeezes him a little, tucks him in closer to his side. “You were so beautiful on the beach.”

Credence freezes, oh. Oh he understands now. And the more this place forces them to remember, the worse they all get, he wishes Percy didn’t have this piece, he wishes he could make it softer for him, make him forget again.

“Corpses aren’t beautiful.” But neither are amalgams of rotting pine cover and moss, deer skulls and bird’s bones, protruding fish spines and so much ink. Percy has worshiped at his altar already, when he was more skin than wood and deep water, but Percy doesn’t care the shape his boy comes in.

“Yeah, you can imagine my horror then when I kept dreaming about you.” Percy huffs out a breath, “Or maybe I didn’t, I can’t remember it clearly, but I remember you. You sunk into me and I sunk into the case, refused to let it go, chased down every errant lead. Which is how I ended up paralyzed. Worthless.”

“You’re not worthless.” Credence holds tightly to Percy, hides his face against his chest. “I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.”

“Do you know how you ended up in the water?” Percy asks him.

Which time? Credence doesn’t though, not any of them, he shakes his head, “I’m sorry.”

“I love you.” Percy promises, and they go quiet then, listen to the wind, the pines, the silence.

Credence sacrifices to retain himself so long, and the next day he’s not as active in Percy’s shadow, lethargic and weak. The others ignore him largely, except the oft times Jacob talks to him like he’s another person entirely, a different Credence. Queenie is getting good at bringing Jacob back around but every time it happens Credence feels himself drained just to remember what he is, and who he’s not.

“We saved you some potato salad!” Tina shouts out to Newt who is sitting on Hinny’s old rocking chair outside the diner. To Credence it is too loud, too shattering of the peace driving back into town had given him. Percy hangs back and Credence pools under the truck in the dark shade like a tired dog.

Newt himself isn’t too much no, and even Percy likes him in so much as their conflicting personalities grate. Credence knows Newt wants to go, has the blood in him that tells him it’s wrong to stay still too long, but now he’s settling into these people and there isn’t a ferry to take him away and back, to make the mooring bearable. He smiles at Tina, eyes failing to meet her gaze and hold it but still he follows the others as they go into the diner.

Percy taps the side of the truck, a warning before he pushes off of it and walks between the buildings, his shadow following too precise, too perfect, Credence needs dormancy.

They’d agreed not to go back here but in the pure righteous heat of summer the old foundation of the church is stagnant against the tide of time. In broad daylight it’s clear to see the burned stones, the crumbling wood beams. Percy walks the perimeter, careful of the inside but Credence knows they shouldn’t be here and he tries to pull him away, but ultimately he is too tired, too mired by the heat, too thin.

The back door rises up from the foundation like a heat mirage, instead of jerking back like he should Percy takes a deep breath and plunges forward, into the mirage, and Credence thinks before his body is forced into unfamiliar shapes, that Percy will damn them both to taste truth, how complacent he is to accept this. But he’d known it all along, hadn’t he.

The heat of the day, watching the others move without him when he should be throwing himself into their lives, tethering himself to reality and the others instead of this apparition. Giving offering to his godling, Credence is angry and helpless and in love.

Credence is angry and helpless and in love. Detective Graves is dabbing his hand with a swab, holding it in his own carefully. Sitting in the relative comfort provided by the shade of the back steps to the church Credence can lean as close as he dares and at this range he can scent the strong coffee they serve at the lobby of the hotel down on the lake, better cigarettes than the kind Faith had gotten out of older boys working at the mill, and fancy cologne (although most every cologne is fancy to Credence he’ll admit.)

“I can’t apologize enough to take this back, I’m sorry.” Detective Graves sounds truly repentant, like Missus Lime did when she promised she’d never drink again if Ma would just find it in her heart and in God’s grace to help her with the rent again. Detective Graves though, he’s not Missus Lime, and he looks up at Credence from his place sitting two steps lower and his honey chocolate eyes look soulful and deep and Credence can’t breathe because he’s never been this much in love before. Never been this wrong till now, and didn’t that just make Ma right? He was a hellion, a bastard son of the devil’s witches.

“It’s okay Detective Graves.” He flexes his hand to test the strain of his own welted skin but the hands holding his just tighten their grip to keep him still.

“I’ve given the key back now, she won’t beat you again for it will she?”

Credence wants so badly to reassure the Detective that it’s going to be fine, that his skin won’t be split for the sins he’s committed against his mother anymore but that’s a lie. He shrugs instead.

“I’m still so sorry Credence.” And then the man bends in a mimicry of prayer and kisses his open palm and Credence feels his world shift off center, off balance, fall to pieces and coalesce. 

Percy pulls him gently off the back steps and into reality, the hot summer day has mellowed to hot summer night. Percy’s body is hard and firm against him and Credence is himself again, each breath threatens to break the illusion.

“I’m sorry.” Percy holds him, brushes his hair back from his face. 

_You’ll kill us, you should leave, I love you._ But Credence can’t say any of it, he just nods, hopeless, silent. 

Percy kisses him gently, hands holding his face and Credence sucks in a breath in surprise and so Percy deepens it, tongue and teeth, till Credence keens and returns it desperately, hands gripping for purchase on red flannel shirt. It’s too much, too much, Credence can’t breathe and he’ll die, he’ll die like this and he wants it, he wants Percy to kill him, to kiss him till the oxygen in his lungs runs out and they fill up with whatever new horror the woods have for him. But Percy pulls away and nuzzles their noses together and maybe Credence is fine not dying.

“If we follow it, if we solve it, maybe this place will let you go.” Percy whispers. 

“Queenie will be worried about you, you left your truck at the diner and we have no way of knowing how much time has past.”

“You’re deflecting.” 

“I learned from the best.” Credence kisses his cheek, but Percy is right, he’s far more boy than shadow right now, more flesh than smoke. Letting the vision run it’s course has given him a little more strength, but not enough. He couldn’t defend Percy if the things that dwell in forgotten places catch his scent. “We have to go back now.”

Percy nods and drops his hand to Credence’s, closes their palms to kiss together and tugs him along dark trails, trying not to stumble. “I think maybe the key they were talking about is the one you came here with.”

Credence nods, it makes as much sense as anything else. But they still don’t know what door it goes to. If it belonged to the church any lock would have been burned down with the rest of the place. “Maybe a storage unit like what Tina said for the sheriff’s station?”

“I’ll test it but those are usually padlocks.”

Percy loses balance a few times but Credence steadies him on familiar path until they’re back on the main street again. Newt is sitting in Hinny’s rocking chair, moonlight turning him sickly pale. “Hi Credence.” He waves cautiously, studiously ignoring Percy in an attempt at neutrality.

“Hello Mister Scamander.” Credence peers in the darkened windows of the Diner around the painted trees decorating them. It’s all closed up for the night, Queenie’s summer decorations hanging frozen with no breeze or ceiling fan to move the shimmering streamers and flamingo sun-catchers. “Shouldn’t you be asleep?”

“Tina decided to stay the night with Queenie and Jacob, I told them I’d go look for you.” Newt rubs his hands against his corduroy slacks nervously and Credence wants to reach out and still him, offer him reassurance but his own would be the sacrifice, he keeps his hand locked with Percy’s. “But I didn’t think you’d want me to.” At this he finally addresses Percy at least. “I know you think I’m running from this, I’m not facing it, but that’s not right. It’s just, why dwell on sadness when you have a second chance, please. Just grab it and hold on, what does it matter where it comes from?”

Newt stands, still fidgeting his hands, made for caring, nursing wounds, defending. He’s like Percy in that way, but far less adept at people.

“I’m sorry the water was taken from you Scamander. But this place isn’t likely to let Credence go until it’s done with us.”

Before Newt can open his mouth and say something incriminating Credence breaks rank and steps between them. “Tina won’t sleep till she knows Percy is back, you should go tell her.”

A nod, Newt frowns, turns, and takes the porch north and away from them.

“You can’t come to blows with him, you need the others Percy.” Credence turns when Newt is far enough away that his whisper-soft voice won’t be carried to him, won’t betray them.

Percy leans against one of the support posts to the porch of the diner, arms crossed, weight braced on one leg to affect a casual stance, ankle crossed. “They’d be better off if they left.”

“You’ll die without them.” Credence hisses, more ember-low wood fire than anything else, not steam, not heat, the summer night is too hot for him to bring much heat of his own. “You need them, don’t push them away.”

“But you don’t?” Percy is mostly shadow, it’s a rough contrast when it’s what Credence has been for so long. It’s not nearly as liquid though, Percy is still sharp and weighty, as gravity pulling as the mountain ranges above them. “I’m not stupid Credence, I know what I’ve done to us by pushing you away. You expect me to drag them through this journey? That’s what this place wants, we both know it now, it’s not going to give you up till its mystery is laid to rest. Isn’t that how ghost stories always go?”

Credence digs his nails into his abused hands, frustration and fatigue in equal measure, he’s hungry. Too physical for this amount of weakness, not enough impression remaining of himself to hang into. He wants to fall away again but Percy nails him down, hammered into old mealy wood and new moon dark. Won’t let him find the comfort of the soft quiet beneath clothing and under hiking boots.

To be selfless, to be Good, to be Christian. Sacrifice. “You should go with them.” Credence can’t breathe, pushing the words past his dry throat.

Percy laughs bitterly, holding his stomach and doubling over sharply in pain. Credence’s pain as the hunger rises up and twists and taunts and takes. “God. Fuck.” Percy chokes. “You self sacrificial little shit c’mere.” And Credence goes, keening, curls into the arms that collect him. They comfort each other till the hunger pangs fade to manageable, no longer turning guts and torn innards.

“Don’t go, don’t leave me.” Credence breaks under the weight of bracketing arms, the chain of his own affection and need. He’s been tied up in knots, tethered to Percy since that first day when his blood had spilled on linoleum and notebooks. He’s no good for Percy, he’s never been, and Percy had fallen for him from photographs and interviews, fallen in love with a boy on a beach before Credence had ever stepped off the ferry and fallen for him.

Lips against his cheek, temple, brushing back his hair, heat and strength, Percy doesn’t let him go. “Can’t get rid of me that easy sweetheart.”

They curl up in the truck bed laying on the tarp from the camp out, Percy’s bedroll pillowing his head and Credence’s head pillowed on his chest. “I love you.” Credence whispers, incriminating, words to be used against them, against him now. Percy will get to the bottom of this mystery if it kills them again and again, just at the off chance that he’ll have Credence at the end. Credence is afraid that the one he is now, won’t be the one he is at the end.

It’s easier to be nothing than to be himself, he nuzzles closer, the second time in the same number of nights, and that’s rare enough for him.

“I love you too.” Percy kisses the crown of his head and Credence knows the truth of it, that Percy had loved him before he even knew him, tied up in investigations and loneliness, deep and desperate enough that despite those memories being taken from him, looking at Credence across from him in the diner booth, three sheets to the wind, his heart recognized Credence just fine.

“I’m tired.” Credence is so tired, and hungry, and human. He doesn’t want to be right now but it’s easier with Percy bleeding heat into him and half holding him close. Percy kisses his hair again and squeezes him gently. 

“Get some sleep, I’ll look after us.”

Credence is too tired to fight this either, and he closes his eyes against the night, against the empty windows of the diner and the still black glass of the lake, and he dreams.

He goes in kicking, gasping for air, and it’s not his time, it’s not, but his clothing is heavy and he’s never learned to swim so he takes in more water than he should on the first dunk, coughs black ink-water, not ink it’s just dark though. The hands that close around his throat and pull him up cut the water off, and he kicks, he kicks and he loses his shoe in the tide.

The water is cold, the grip is colder, harsher, harder. 

The stones are smooth under his feet, soot clings to him but it’s mostly in his head. He’s alone ankle deep in the water. Skipping stones toward the trees on the opposite side. Red-light eyes watch him from the shoreline but there are no ghosts in this part of the story. He’s an adult now, and he was probably society's version of what makes a man before that. He just feels lost, adrift, a person out of time.

Credence wakes up to raindrops on his face and Percy shaking him gently. “Let’s get in the truck, we can sleep in the cab.” But it’s a tighter space there, enough for Percy to lay out on his back, bedroll propping him up, but no place for Credence to lay beside him and unmoored by the dreams he stalls out straddling Percy’s legs lower down as fat drops of rain start hitting the windshield. Percy tilts his head down and up at him simultaneously, one arm braced along the back rest. “You weigh less than wet laundry, come on kid you can just lay on me.”

He shakes his head and his eyes break from glitter-dark eyes, trail past and down, stop starting on a frown that turns slow, Percy’s lips part on a silent exclamation. Credence grips Percy’s jeans at the knees, lets the hunger roll through them like the slow storm riding over the water. “Oh.” Percy, dry mouth, licks his lips. Credence’s gaze drops, to the swallow of a throat in need of a shave, dark hair and rough, his hands rub raw on the texture beneath them, up Percy’s thighs and back down.

Credence drags his nails lightly down jean fabric, catch at old snags in the denim. “Christ.” Percy groans.

“Blasphemy.” Credence trills, his heart is beating so fast in the cage of his chest, he’s not hard but he’s hungry, and Percy shifts like he’s uncomfortable and Credence drags his eyes with enough weight to pin him in place. The shudder of breath through Percy’s lungs, the way his arms brace on the seat, the firm plane of his stomach obscured by dark plaid. Credence doesn’t ask for permission, a force of nature, he moves his hands, slipping rough, over thighs and the edge of hips and pushes his hands under the hem of the shirt till it’s his wrists pale and revealed and hot skin under his hands. Dry and safe, the rain comes harder, and Credence purrs.

He leans forward, touching and testing, hunger appeased but still growing, and Percy’s breath comes sharp every so often when he tracks someplace sensitive. But Credence has touched him like this before and it’s not enough, it’s never enough. So he folds himself over Percy, tackles shirt buttons with nervous fingers too much hunger to be hesitant but they slip on the fastenings a few times. Percy is dark eyes and want by the time Credence has the shirt pushed away and Credence wants too.

So he leans down, lips in worship, presses soft kisses eyes closed to fever-hot skin and Percy groans, moves a hand to tangle into Credence’s hair. Against his chest, the flat of his stomach, the hem of his jeans, up further again, up and a bite to bared throat and Percy’s hips jerk unbidden and Credence trills woods strange in the soft of his throat, not a human sound no but one of clear delight and Percy tugs him closer in his own.

Credence gives his weight as Percy pulls at him, sinks teeth and suction into bared throat, careful and cautious. He’s not sure he’s doing it right until Percy is panting something soft and blasphemous and pulling him close and pushing him away in unison. Credence follows by example until the taste of salt almost comes bitter blood copper rich and then he draws back sharp enough to make Percy gasp hoarsely and bruise at Credence’s arms clutching him. “Sorry.” They say in unison, and then Credence flushes and Percy laughs and moves his hands trembling to grip the seat again. 

“May I?” Credence sits back, kneeling with legs astride Percy’s, and it’s not clear by his words or the gaze of his eyes so carefully neutral and circumspect but when his hand falls to the hem of Percy’s jeans, wrist brushing firm flesh through thick denim, it’s more than clear. The interior cab is fogged up breath now, the rain falls thunderous on the metal roof. Percy licks his lips again, eyes desperate in the dark and Credence only knows this because he manages to glance up shy and nervous.

“I’d rather you let me.”

Credence closes his eyes and tries not to take it personally but he still does, “I’m a quick learner, really.”

Percy laughs and it’s surprising enough to get Credence to look at him again but there isn’t anything cruel in the way Percy is smiling fondly at him, “Oh Credence, I’m not worried about your ability to get me off. But I ah…” Percy shifts a little, brings his right hand away from the seat to brush Credence’s hair away from his face, grip the back of his neck, “I’m very invested in the pleasure of my partner.”

Credence remembers Percy’s hips jerking against his hand, not even skin to skin, oh, it’s, he doesn’t know how to feel about this, face flushed dark, it’s ultimately very flattering, that he could generate that kind of a response. But he wants, and he hungers, for more, so he turns his head to press his lips against Percy’s wrist and listen to the way his breath comes quick because of it.

“I want to put you in my mouth Percy.”

“Fuck.”

“That would give me pleasure.”

“Christ, fucking shit Credence.” 

Credence figures that’s a win. He pushes Percy back onto the bedroll and when his hands fall to the button on Percy’s jeans again the man just nods at him, eyes hard and hungry in the weight of their gaze.

He has seen Percy before, in showers, laid out on the bed, he has touched him but not directly, zipper drawn, button undone, it’s dark hair in the space of open fabric and Credence shudders bone deep, forbidden and he’s wrong but the rain is too loud for him to focus much on the voice of his Ma berating him for his nature.

“Baby you’re doing a lot for a man’s ego looking at me like that.”

His eyes dart up to Percy and he knows they’re not quite right, the ones on his face, and his mouth is too much ash, and he needs to tether himself to something or risk blowing away by his own emotional turmoil. So he shudders and drops his gaze again and slips his hands to draw hard flesh from dark fabric. He can feel Percy shiver under him, shifting weight, and one hand joins his own to help arrange thick flesh and the fold of Percy’s jeans beneath it. The line of him isn’t as long as Credence which is his rather limited comparison to make, there weren’t a lot of options growing up on the soup kitchen line and in the church for learning what another man looked like, especially not after Ma caught wind of the way Credence’s eyes tracked the breadth of shoulders in the pews before them.

But Percy is thicker, even when flaccid he’s hefty, a weight that Credence had tried to ignore, but now it’s in his hands and it’s not soft, it’s hard and hot, demanding Credence’s attention, his praise and worship, and oh but he can give it now, wants to give it now.

He’s never done this before but the way that Percy draws in breath and holds it when he lowers his head, makes a bower of his body, it tells him it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter at all.

The weight is firm and his mouth is too wet, hungering, and Percy groans again and so does Credence, closing his eyes against the consuming emotion that turns him up inside, water sloshing violently in the bottle of his body. His hands grasp at the strong muscles in Percy’s thighs and he tastes salt skin and wants more. Inelegant but greedy and this doesn’t matter either, Percy pushes his hair back, gathers it off Credence’s face, holds it in a ring around his grasped fist. “Oh look at you hollowing out for my cock, you’re so good for me sweetheart, that’s it.”

Credence flushes dark, keeps his eyes closed because he can feel Percy watching him regardless, can just imagine the intensity of his gaze, the way his lips form around decadent sinful words. He also isn’t sure what Percy means, he just wants, he wants every part of him, wants to take him in, hear him come apart. So he tries harder, slick lips, careful teeth, throat swallowing all wrong for the shape of it but he’s not a boy he’s a monster. He moans around thick flesh, tasting pleasure by the pulse of a heart through straining veins.

Percy makes a thumping sound, fist hitting the back rest, head hitting the glass, reverberating groan all the way in his chest. Credence swallows, swallows, around hard flesh, eyes inhuman white and shut tight.

He draws off but he’s not breathing anymore, has he ever? Was it always a lie in this place, he’d not paid the ferry man but he’s certainly on the shores of the Styx going down on this man he’d die a hundred times more to appease. 

“Gods Credence you’re so beautiful.” It’s so tender, so gentle, a whispered thing and it gets Credence to look up at him from where he is bent double, hand fisting the base of rigid pleasure, mouth trying it’s best to consume. Percy looks as wrecked as Credence feels, eyes too bright, face florid flushed, chest heaving. Credence pants in cadence to the work of Percy’s lungs, learning to be again, to breathe again, and Percy moans to see him struggling with it, with filling his lungs with oxygen and to not choke on the thick rigidity of the flesh his greedy throat spasms to take more of. “Through your nose sweetheart, there’s a boy.” Percy praises, pets back his hair and knots it again tighter in his fist and Credence surges at the tug, gasp of pleasure that stabs through him.

He takes Percy down, kisses his own fist and then works him, stroke to stroke, mouth to hand till Percy isn’t praising him so much as cursing him, eyes closed, head thrown back against the passenger side window and while it’s blasphemy the words Percy is using, Credence hears it as he should, his lover singing hallelujah in praise.

He loses himself in the stroke, in the swallow, in the struggle to remember to breathe now that he doesn’t need to remember to be. He falls to this, finds himself rocking hips to the pace of his own ministrations, hard against Percy’s lower legs.

And he’s there in that when Percy gently but firmly pulls him off by his hair, holds Credence throat taut, lips parted and hissing tongue to teeth, “No, no I want-” More, hunger, messy explicit things, “Not yet I need more.”

“Jesus Fucking Christ Credence I’m gonna come, please and I’m trying to be gentle. Do you want me to do it down your throat, fuck?”

“Yes.” Credence hisses, a gas leak in a very old church, vicious and hungry, starving, “But I just want-” More, he wants more, and Percy’s desperation softens, he understands the hunger, he can feel it, always cresting, barely abating, the wave getting higher and higher the closer it gets to the shore, “More, first.”

“Loosen up your grip, I’m not going to last if you keep stroking like that.”

So Credence obliges, slackens his fist and Percy lets his hair go. “Like this?” Credence strokes gentle, slow.

“Yeah, fuck.” Percy groans again, closes his eyes and thuds his head back and shivers, he breathes and Credence watches him rein in his pleasure.

Credence doesn’t wait for the next prompt, he rubs his lips against swollen crown, licks his lips and red-purple flesh. As dark as berries but not at all sweet, Credence doesn’t mind. Gentle and slow, and he can do that too, eyes drifting shut, kissing hot skin like Percy had kissed him in spring.

“Oh fuck Credence.” Percy moans and it sounds like a trauma, Credence trills pride, Percy’s hands skid against the seat blankets beneath them. “Yeah, like that. Oh sweetheart you’re so good, so pretty on my cock like that.”

Credence understands what he means by hollow now, and with the edge of hunger tamped down by a necessity to be slow, he can revel in the texture. The pulse against the inside of his cheek, the pressure against his lips, the bitter salt tang of Percy’s rising pleasure. He learns him, leans into the hunger as it burns, slow, go slow, revel in the pressure in the rising tide. Percy pants beneath him, arches, sways, hands tug at bright woven cover. It’s enough, it’s enough, it’s not enough.

Percy groans when Credence draws off, he groans again when Credence laps lines, swirls tongue, drags teeth gentle-sharp. “Credence,” Percy chokes it out, “Oh my little love, you’re so good for me.”

Credence can’t, he needs, and the praise is too much, he’s dizzy with it, his own pulse racing, stutter-stop jerk of his hips, he keens soft lips around hard flesh and Percy feels his hunger. Credence wants to stay right here forever, and maybe they do, Percy sobbing and Credence hungering, and better, more, sweeter, the taste of Percy’s pleasure leaking, straining flesh.

The rain pours and Percy’s breath comes fast and then shallow and then fast again, and Credence doesn’t ever know when they’re close till they’re almost there and he has to slow the pull and take.

If the storm could last forever, if this night could be their eternal afterlife, Credence would be okay with that.

Percy isn’t though, he’s almost sobbing, praising Credence, giving, giving, and finally Credence takes, throat tight, hand stroking fast, just like before. Percy bangs his hand against the back cabin window, curses sharply with his spine a perfect arch.

It’s bitter and Credence loves it, lets the taste linger between swallows and draws off slow still tasting, tongue gentle against oversensitive skin. “Credence stop, jesus shit, please.” Percy keens, curls from the stomach to draw him off and up, holds him against his chest. Credence hides his face in the crook of his shoulder and neck. “God.” Percy sins.

Credence did him one better at least this time, licking his lips and tasting Percy’s skin against them, he presses a kiss to the side of his lover’s neck.

“Okay?” Credence asks voice tremulous, hopeful, his body feels like it’s vibrating at a frequency he’s not supposed to be on like a radio picking up a station not meant for anyone to hear.

“Gods, yes, Gods.”

Credence smiles and nuzzles himself closer. “‘K.” And then he sleeps, the hunger pacified, and his dreams not strong enough to pierce through the haze of his smug satisfaction.

The light is too bright and no amount of turning his face away keeps it from annoying him and eventually it’s also a huffing sound and a rumble and he slowly realizes Percy, who is his bed still, is laughing at him. He bites down on sticky hot skin and Percy sucks in a sharp breath and a louder laugh all at once. “Sweetheart Tina is right on the porch trying to pretend she’s not spying on us, I mean I’m not adverse to giving a show but-” and he laughs harder when Credence groans in embarrassment, “Yeah, let’s get some breakfast.”

“I found some eggs, I don’t know what kind.” Queenie exclaims with her standard soft excitement. Percy says they’re probably goose eggs, still she’s turned them into a batch of french toast. “Good morning Credence.” She kisses his cheek and ruffles up his hair, “Newt told us you were back so I put some chocolate chips in between the slices for you.”

He eats seconds and then half of Percy’s seconds, sitting in their old booth.

Percy’s eyes track sharp as the porch creeks. When Credence turns his head Hinny has shuffled into his old rocking chair. Chloe is walking by on her way to work, and the ferry is moored on the pier. Newt is staring at it with a look of distrust though, and when Credence catches his eyes he offers him a nervous smile and shuffles over to offer his leftovers too. Credence starts when he sees his boss limping along on his way to the Newspaper, Mouse’s aged back curved and his cane tapping the wood.

“I see we’re being rewarded for good behavior.” Percy murmurs into his coffee mug.

“What?” Tina frowns.

Credence isn’t about to betray Percy, he focuses on the french toast instead.

Except of course Percy is honest and blunt, and perfectly capable of starting his own fires, “We went back to the church and had another vanishing.” An escape route really, a lessening of guilt, Credence can see the truth of it maybe. The others could leave now, leave Percy and Credence behind if they wanted, because look it’s almost like it’s always been, it’s not empty, they don’t need to feel grief leaving them behind.

Maybe it’s what Percy and Credence want, maybe that’s why it’s giving them all this option. But what they want isn’t what the others want. Queenie still isn’t leaving without Percy, and Tina won’t leave without Queenie, and Newt isn’t leaving without Tina now. 

And Percy will never leave without Credence.

Tina huffs upset, throws her hands up, “I can’t believe how stubbornly stupid you can be, you just went in alone?”

“I’m never alone.” Percy leans back against the booth upholstery.

“Okay, as much as I’m fond of you Credence, can we all come to an agreement that the teenager isn’t a good candidate for the buddy system when half the time he’s Peter Pan’s shadow?” Tina doesn’t sound upset with Credence, but she is upset and she stresses the word teenager. Credence really hopes Percy put himself back in his jeans sometime before Tina had spotted them.

“I think this is less about me going back to the church and more about-” Percy starts but Tina is sharp and full of venom this morning.

“He’s still a kid!”

“You don’t think I’ve realized?!”

Newt whistles a low sound and trips his way outside. Queenie glares daggers at him while Credence sinks into the seat wishing he didn’t feel so cohesive for once.

“So what are you doing?! He’s been through so much, you know it! You were there and you saw, and we’ve spoken about it, how can you do this?”

“Teenie, maybe you shouldn’t-” Queenie tries, she does, but they’re hissing cats and too worked up and Tina is the voice of Percy’s guilt.

“How can I do what?” Percy challenges, even sitting down he has so much presence and bearing.

“Have whatever intimate relationship you’ve got going, I don’t know, this is wrong!”

“I am intimately aware of the moral transgression I am making, maybe you should mind your own business Porpentina.”

She dumps a tray of muffins at him and stomps out.

When Percy and Credence move to help Queenie pick up the stale baked goods Percy breaks down, laughing, braced on his hands and knees. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Oh no, c’mon honey help me get him to the bathroom.” Queenie takes one side and Credence the other and they get him to the men’s room at least but Percy pushes them out, and when Credence tries to hover at the door Queenie tugs him away, back to the muffins and bright sunshine. “He’ll be fine.”

“It’s my fault. He never wanted to.”

Queenie pats Credence’s shoulder, “Sweetie if he didn’t wanna then you wouldn’t be.” A soft smile, but she doesn’t mean it in a judgmental way, more it’s phrased to soothe Credence’s fear. “I knew he was waiting for someone y’know? I get these intuitions, I just look at someone sometimes and I know what they’re thinking or maybe something intimate about them I shouldn’t. Teenie used to think it was all bogus but we’ve come a long way.” She fetches the broom to get at crumbs and gives him the handled dustpan to keep steady. “But when Hinny showed me in and introduced me to Percy as a fellow New Yorker I knew he was waiting for someone.”

She gently pushes his shoulder when he cowers too much, “And you know what?” she smiles brightly, “The second you walked in I knew he wouldn’t have to wait no more.”

“He feels so bad, I don’t-” Credence sighs, “I know I’m young but I don’t feel young, I feel so old, I’m so tired and hungry and I just want to be with him, I don’t want him to feel bad for being with me. I don’t want Tina to be angry at him.”

“Tina and Percy are far too alike and they’ll get over themselves. It’ll be okay sweetie.”

Queenie has work to do and Credence sits cowering in the booth till Percy comes out, hunger growing and growing and spiking at the tired half smile Percy throws him, the hand carding through sink-wet hair. “Sorry.”

“Any fishbones?” Credence wonders if this counts as a joke, it’s mostly just horrific.

“No, just coffee.” He ruffles up Credences hair and looks to the windows, to Queenie, to the linoleum floor. “Let’s go home Credence.”

“Yes.” The relief is palpable.

It is immeasurably cooler in the darkened cabin when they open the lake-facing windows and the rear windows to let air flow in from the water. Credence takes a shower while Percy looks over the clothing he’d last vanished in. When he comes out toweling his hair dry Percy is investigating a roll of receipts. “Found this in your back pocket.”

Credence curls up on the bed next to him and glances at the list Percy is recording into one of his notebooks, an accounting of each receipt, it’s easier to track Percy’s neat concise handwriting than the fading scraps of yellowed paper.

The items are all small things, a soda, a roll of tape, a bottle of lighter fluid, a box of condoms.

Percy snorts, “When did either of us buy condoms?”

Credence shakes his head, “When did either of us buy condoms over four decades ago?”

“Good point.” Percy kisses his hair. “Could you finish filling this out while I grab a shower?” And Percy leaves him sputtering, helpless but to comply.

Credence has seen enough of Percy’s record keeping but being included in this way is new and fills him with trepidation. He sits up on the bed properly and lays the receipts and notebook out in front of him, fidgets with the ball-point pen advertising the hotel within a stone’s throw across the lake (give or take some unpleasant hiking or deep water swimming.) He smiles to himself as he presses a curling piece of paper down.

Credence Barebone is seventeen and he is in love and Detective Graves buys him a soda, receipt curled around the glass bottle to soak up condensation and later Credence will dry it out and press it down like leaves between the pages of a book and keep it like some remembrance of Iscariot’s betrayal for thirty silver coins.

Credence Barebone is nineteen sitting on Percy’s bed and he writes down another soda on the line opposite the date line.

When Percy comes out of the shower, towel low on his hips and so much skin, Credence has finished the list. All in all it’s circumstantial evidence. Aspirin, a bottle of rubbing alcohol, a candybar.

Percy absentmindedly captures Credence’s hand in his own, presses soft kisses to his knuckles and stares at the list as if to track some pattern only he can see. He’s not all there Credence can tell but in the quiet of the bedroom he is there enough for Credence who is so often made of abstract concepts and guilt, even before he came to this place. Percy blinks when Credence finally moves the list onto the bedside table, comes up from deep water when Credence tugs at him to lay out on the bed with him. Percy keeps hold of Credence’s hand and captures it between them, pressed to Percy’s sternum.

“Tell me?” Credence prompts softly, a tree outside blows in the breezy remnants of last night’s storm, shadow and light from hundreds of leaves paints Percy in beautiful contrast. 

“I think you’re capable of making your own decisions.”

Credence smiles faintly at the unspoken, waiting. Queenie is right, they’re too alike and the guilt didn’t just turn off because of a singular break in spring after one terrible day.

“But so am I, and I haven’t been making the best ones concerning my conduct with you. Tina is right, even if we accept the legality, our age difference is far, far more than should be hand-waved over. Life experience alone you-” Percy can’t finish the sentence, Credence is kissing him, and when Credence doesn’t seem to have any intention of stopping the soft press of lips, sharing breath, Percy huffs and returns it.

When Credence _does_ pull away he manages to cut Percy off again, but verbally this time, “I remembered. I remembered going into the water last night, before the rain came.”

“Oh god I’m so sorry.” Percy has him in his arms before another breath passes, held tight, “I’m so sorry Credence you never should have had to remember that.” Not like Percy keeps it with him, the silent sentinel of the coroner’s report, but they’re here now.

“Please don’t tell me my life experience isn’t equal or matched, please.” Credence brushes a kiss to Percy’s sternum where his hand had been pressed so tenderly. “We have earned our comfort.”

Percy nods, holds Credence a little tighter, “Is it my fault? Did you remember because I remembered you?”

Credence knows Percy would gladly take this upon himself, and in some part he will no matter what Credence says, “No, it’s just this place.” Which is the truth, giving them pieces to solve, to redeem, to understand and dragging them along. It’s not intelligent but it’s haunted, dripping corruption into the water and woods. An island that never existed, cutting off an infected limb from the rest of the world. They are the tourists that could leave now, not Credence but the rest of them and now they’re all collateral damage to mistakes Credence has made, he takes responsibility for that even though he shouldn’t. Remembering isn’t anyone’s fault, it’s something he should have had all along. 

“Did you sleep at all last night? And you barely ate at the diner.” Credence tugs back enough to look down at Percy, using his height to try and game some authority but he barely feels like vapor let alone something worthy of respect. He’s annoyed that he’d been so concrete in the diner, expended all that energy only to run out now when he could use it. At least the woods aren’t this exhaustion, he can only glut himself so much on time and food. The more he remembers the more real he is, but the fear is still which he will retain clarity at the end, if there is an end.

“No, we don’t really have much here. I think I’ve got a tin of spam from when we looted the cornerstone. I hope Chloe Helena doesn’t try and call the sheriff over a break in, there’s coming back from vanishing but I doubt the dead come back quite the same.”

“We did.” Credence murmurs but Percy looks unconvinced. 

“I don’t think so, I think we’re replacements for what was lost, like game tokens in someone’s old monopoly game, you lose the dog so you put an army man or something in there instead. I don’t think Mouse, Jacob, even Jack, I don’t think they’re like us but I don’t think they’re quite real either. They’re part of our group hallucination.”

Credence feels sick and horrified by this, “That can’t be, Jacob is very kind, I don’t want to think he’s not real.”

“Except he and Mouse, Jack too, they all remember you, remember us. But they’re not tourists, they’ve lived here all their life. But that’s impossible. Jack said he hadn’t been born yet but he said he’d grown up hearing about what had happened. They are the combined memories of this place, the remnants. Dusk Falls is a ghost town, wherever it really is, logging town in the Pacific Northwest, mountains of Washington - wherever that is - Dusk Falls is dead. With the tourist industry gone under, the mill closed, there isn’t any reason to keep the town going, a few generations out and no one has a reason to stay. This is all a lure, ghosts inhabiting a ghost town, just enough to keep us invested, to keep us around.”

“To keep you around.” Credence whispers.

Percy turns, lets Credence go and he sits on the edge of the bed, bent to turn off the light. It’s bright afternoon so the windows let in low light from a long summer day, the room only dims a little but it takes the edge off. “Maybe I’m wrong.” But Percy doesn’t really think he’s wrong, Credence knows.

Credence moves again, shifting closer and when he leans into Percy, Percy leans back in turn.

“You’re leaving soon.” Percy tucks his arm around Credence, half holds him close. “I didn’t even get to return the favor.” A teasing sort of sweetness compared to the guilt this morning, Credence is so glad to hear it.

“Next time.” He promises.

They sleep entwined, late afternoon naps, Credence wakes, sleeps, wakes again, Percy breathes steady at his side each time, reassuring Credence of his presence and life. He doesn’t like to think that no one here already is real, for how real does that even make him when he’s so often barely there.

The room is quiet and dark when he wakes more exhausted than before, he moves his hand against the bed to find Percy, feels his fingers curve around a wrist and then he fails to be.

Credence likes to work at the newspaper, and he likes to volunteer at the library, he even likes to clean the church as long as Ma isn’t there to critique his work. Detective Graves finds him in all of these places over the months, learns his schedule and drops in when Credence is most likely to be alone. Mr. Peel the librarian takes supper every day at the same time and the library stays open regardless so that students doing their homework assignments have a place to use reference books (and keep them out of trouble.) So Credence mans the desk while he’s gone and it’s here that Detective Graves has found him three times before.

On the fourth the man is holding an unopened bottle of coke still dripping condensation, wearing a black suit with black tie and lapel pins, and smiles when he sees Credence like it’s pure chance they’re running into each other like this. Carrie and Lauren giggle and hide behind the reference stack for A-J looking at the cut of the Detective’s clothing, the charisma he holds himself with. Credence isn’t annoyed or scared to see him anymore. The Detective seems to keep a closer watch on his Ma than he does even Credence. “Hello young Mister Barebone. Do you have any books on tree moss?”

“You’re not allowed to have drinks in the library.” Credence’s voice is a murmur, whisper soft, self conscious. There is a cruel peel of laughter from A-J and his cheeks burn crimson.

“You will have to confiscate it from me, how rude I’ve been.” And he puts the bottle on the counter, receipt curled around the concave edges, the glass seam, bottle-green and luminescent in the light. Credence’s hand shakes a little when he takes the soda and tucks it under the counter.

“Reference.” And Credence feels a spike of sinful satisfaction to hear Carrie and Lauren rushing around the corner as he leads the Detective down their aisle and then the next they’d hid in just to spite before tracking back again. He pulls a field identification guide down, a book on trees in the area, and another on the history of the town, including a good section about the native flora. “These should get you started, you can’t check reference books out but we might have something in non-fiction. Likely not as useful as any of these.”

Detective Graves takes the small stack and smiles in a self depreciative way that Credence hates himself to find so captivating and charming. “This will be fine, thank you Credence. I confess I never did learn how to use a library properly.”

Somewhere a few stacks in Carrie or Lauren sigh in a fashion Credence knows means exaggerated swooning. “The table is back by the water fountain, do you need any paper or a pencil?”

“No I carry my own, thank you my boy.”

Credence tries not to dwell on the endearment, if it’s right to call it that, but he fails entirely.

When Mr. Peel returns he goes back to stacking, and gives himself excuses to pass by the Detective in as circumspect a manner as possible. He is bent over the book, a frown of concentration and a pair of reading glasses perched on his noble nose. Credence bites his lip and almost runs into a shelf so he stops making excuses to look at him and goes back to shelving entirely. He’s picking up the wayward books on empty tables when the clock chimes closing time and Mr. Peel tells the Detective he’ll have to come back tomorrow but he’ll reserve the books for him if needed.

“No I think I got what I came for, thank you.” Charismatic, and even Sheriff Christian liked him if the conversation she had with Deputy Lindow that Credence had eavesdropped on last sunday in church was anything to go by. “Mister Barebone was quite an assistance in locating these for me, has he gone home already I wanted to thank him again.”

Which is of course Credence’s cue to do a vanishing act but he has an armful of books and he’s never left Mr. Peel hanging like that, added his light summer-weight jacket is hanging up in the office and he’d never make it back there and back outside without being noticed. So his attempt to do just that anyway ends badly. The Detective and Mr. Peel sight him in between the corner display of cookbooks and macrame and Mr. Peel calls him over.

“Credence is quite the catch I’ll have you know, the paper might pay him but I’m gunning to have him on a grant. He’d make a lovely library sciences major. An ever expanding field remember that Credence!”

“Yes sir Mr. Peel.”

“Thank you for finding those books for me Mister Barebone, they were a great help.” The Detective’s voice has the same depth of warmth it did when he’d coerced Credence into standing by while he picked Ma’s office lock. He can only nod, mouth dry, eyes cast down to focus on the reading glasses folded carefully and hanging from the man’s waistcoat lapels.

It is when the Detective had just exited after carrying a conversation with Mr. Peel longer than anyone ever wants to including Credence who tries his best to be a good and attentive person, that Credence, putting on his jacket remembers the soda bottle under the counter. Face flushed he bids Mr. Peel a goodnight - but Mr. Peel is consumed by a book on Egyptian scarabs and isn’t listening - and grabs the bottle from under the counter, rushing out to chase after the Detective.

Except of course he needn’t have, Detective Graves is waiting, leaning against his car, smoke curling up from the cigarette between his fingers in an elegant way Credence is sure he’s seen in one of the old movies at the theater on half price days back when Faith used to smuggle him in. “Y-you forgot your soda pop.” Credence could hang himself.

“S’yours anyway, can’t drink em, they give me heartburn.”

“Oh.” Credence holds the bottle ineffectual, shifting now, “I should get home.”

“Want a lift? Not all the way, I know your Ma wouldn’t like that but I could drop you off at the cemetery road.”

Credence knows, he knows it in his blood, in every lesson from church, that he needs to say no, that he needs to refuse if he’s to be a good Christian son and loyal to the Lord. “Yes please.” He says instead, and when Detective Graves smiles at him it makes Credence drop his head in submission a shiver going up his spine just wrong enough to feel good.

When Detective Graves cuts the engine outside the cemetery and it’s full moon bright Credence fidgets, knowing they’re hidden by the high stone wall from both roads. He’s heard from the other students that people sometimes park out here and down by the lake to neck, although he is a good and faithful son and he would never do a thing like that, knowing his Ma is waiting for him at home. Knowing his Ma will beat him if he’s late. “Thank you for the ride Detective.”

When he goes to open the door the Detective takes his arm, shifts him back around, “She’s with her sister tonight isn’t she.” It’s not a question, it’s something else, and Credence feels like maybe it’s a reminder. That no one is going to beat him tonight and no one is going to know he’s not home on time because Chastity works late at the mill and Modesty is with Ma and Aunt Beth.

He nods, heart in his throat, goes when the Detective tugs him so gently to turn toward him, to look at him.

“Do you want -”

“Yes.” Credence says as explicit and clear as he says Amen and the Detective smiles that self depreciative smile that makes Credence tremble.

“You didn’t even let me say it.”

Credence leans forward in the space and presses their lips together like how he imagines it must work and it’s so terrible, dry and half a breath’s length and his face is burning like a firebrand. 

The Detective laughs but before Credence can run he curves his hand around the back of Credence’s neck, carding through the fall, tips his chin up with the other.

It is, much, much better this time, and Credence gasps, eyes closing, hands trembling, and Detective Graves sighs like he’s wanted to do this for so long, and it’s perfect, it’s perfect.

He teaches Credence to breathe between brushes, soft voice giving decadent instruction, holds Credence so tenderly and it’s not like what he’s heard this is like, the throes of passion aren’t inflaming, he isn’t consumed. But he’s breathless and his body quivers like unset cheesecake and his face, shoulders, chest all feel hot with flushed blood.

When the Detective does draw away Credence bites his lip, watching him, watching the soft smile, waiting to be discounted, apologized to, cast down like a heretic. “You’re beautiful.”

Credence shivers, eyes closed, holding his breath because this can’t be real, it must be the most sinful dream. He shakes his head, denies it, because he knows better. The Detective collects him into his arms completely, lifts him over the stick shift and into his lap and Credence is thin enough, scrawny enough to fit between him and the steering wheel. He gasps, arms bracing against the windshield and the headrest of the Detective’s seat.

“Okay?”

Credence nods slowly, but unsure ultimately.

Detective Graves nudges at his jawline with his nose and lips till Credence turns his face away from him, tilts his head up.

Necking, which Credence has a firmer understanding of now than he had earlier in the day, is completely different from kissing and he’s maybe going to die. Wriggling, breathless, almost vicious and then so delicately gentle.

He doesn’t know till later how careful the Detective is in his ministrations, doesn’t know till he looks in the mirror to see only the barest marks that fade before Ma can catch sight of them. He only knows right now he’s going to die if this keeps on and he’s going to die if it stops. His wriggling, his writhing turns them both breathless until with a huff of frustration the Detective pins his hips in place under strong forearm. Which is also when Credence realizes the delirious ache means he’s hard, very hard, and he should have probably figured that out before he had the man’s arm pinning his erection down.

“You’re beautiful, just like this, don’t argue with me. Just be a good boy and nod.”

Credence nods, eyes closed, his shame nothing compared to the way the Detective’s voice turns him up inside, makes the ache pulse in him.

“Have I made you feel good?”

Credence nods again, because as much as it _aches_ he feels so good, not just bodily but like for once he’s been good, good for something and someone, it’s rapturous.

“You’re so beautiful for me, has anyone ever seen you like this before? Is this just for me Credence?”

Credence keens then, pulse fast, “Just you, no one, no one else. I’m wrong, I don’t like the girls sir, and, and I, it’s-” But the Detective just shushes him, soothes back his hair with his free hand.

“None of that tonight, it’s just us Credence, and you’re so good for me. I want to hear you now, I want to hear it when you feel good, don’t bite your lip and keep it from me.”

“I don’t understand?” Credence says but then he does when the Detective twists the arm pinning his hips down to press his hand to palm against the swell in his slacks. But he needn't have asked for Credence can’t help the cry, hips jerking against clever hand.

“Oh you sing so sweet, that’s it.” And the Detective presses harder, cupping him, swift stroke, more than anything Credence has dared, and he’s dared quite a bit, but never this rough, this much pressure, never in the tight confines of his slacks, and never a hand as large as the one on him now.

Credence sobs something, probably a devotional prayer, he cries out again, and then buries his face against broad shoulder, but it does nothing to muffle the sound he makes when he comes wet in his slacks against the palm of the Detective’s hand.

He’s held, cradled close, and Detective Graves kisses his hair back away from his face and praises him again and again, soft kisses and tender touches until Credence has to go, has to or else Chastity will get off her shift and come home to an empty house. But he doesn’t sleep when he gets to his room. He drinks the bottle of coca cola, puts the receipt in his hiding place under the loose floorboard beneath his bed and tucks the bottle into his book bag to dispose tomorrow.

Ma breaks the cane on his back when she finds it during surprise inspection next morning but each swift strike does nothing to burn shame into him. Does nothing to diminish the pleasurable remembrance of the night before.

He bleeds through his shirt, can't stay his shift, and Mr. Mousilopolis doesn't mind his leaving, chipper and cheery. He doesn't know where to go, he buys a bottle of rubbing alcohol from the pharmacy for a few pennies and walks aimless, but not really. 

Everyone knows the Detective is staying at the hotel, and when he asks Lionell at the front register which room he's in because a book he'd requested at the library came in and he's delivering it for him he only feels a little guilty for the lie, because most of him is just pain and nerves.

The Detective opens the door in his bathrobe, surprised. "You're not off shift for an hour nearly."

"Can I use your b-bathroom?" Credence trips over his words and he doesn't know what he'll do if he's been wrong, if he can't ask for this after last night, if he's overstepped his boundaries.

"Sweetheart, come in, come in, what happened?"

He sobs relief, the Detective gentling him through the door and when it's closed the world outside is nothing but blocked out light, and Credence is shadow, blessed shadow.

"That explains the rubbing alcohol." Percy says to his own shadow, looking at the list again, and he is clearly so exhausted, clearly so pained, and guilt ridden, and angry at himself and a ghost. Credence can't soothe him, can't give him comfort.

The room is dim early morning light, sunrise soft and Percy stands, casts about, sits again. He strides finally to the kitchen, looks out the window opposite to the room, locked door, curtained windows, a different life. Would the bottle still be there or would some maid have tucked it away to bring home, maybe it’s been forgotten under the bathroom sink. They didn’t see the aftermath but Percy tended a boy too and Credence knows if he’d been getting kisses and praise like that when Percy had been dabbing at his open wounds, then he would have been insatiable. It had been bad enough so far.

Percy has nowhere to rage but inward and he’s clearly too tired for much of that. It doesn’t take long sitting on the couch with the throw Credence liked to use over his shoulders, till Percy finally sleeps, as deep as the dead. Whether they are or not.

Flitting shadow, the day passes, dusk again, and dawn, dusk again, and dawn, and Credence can’t wake him like this, and it’s a punishment but it’s not really. Percy isn’t dead, he’s exhausted, bleeding warmth that his shadow devours. 

Tina’s quiet knock at the door doesn’t wake him, a hundred scratching sounds, howls in the trees, whispers through the keyhole couldn’t wake him so she certainly doesn’t. He sleeps through her knocking harder, calling out, and then climbing through the window. He finally wakes when she shakes him and his shadow dances, not that they can see in the dim room. “Oh god I thought you were dead.” Tina is almost crying in her relief.

Percy learns he’s been asleep for days, that Rick down at the trailer park wanted him to help him evict someone so Tina came to find him. “But I’m pretty sure Rick doesn’t exist.” Tina averts her eyes. “I’m sorry, you’re right it’s none of my business, he’s an adult and you’re both my friends.”

Percy scrubs at his face, “I’m respecting his choices, and I think… that’s all you need to know Tina.”

She nods, suitably chastised, presents him a paper bag, “From Jacob, it’s donuts cause we’re cops.”

Percy snorts but he makes coffee in the kitchen and they split the donuts between them. “I see the deliveries are showing up again.” There are rainbow sprinkles and glaze.

“You really think it’s on account you went to the church?”

Percy shrugs, “Correlation doesn’t equal causation but we’re ultimately in the business of tying the evidence together. We’ll have to see if it happens again.”

Tina flinches and rings her finger around her coffee cup, “I don’t like you guys going into whatever bizarro world you vanished into, I don’t care if we have to hunt deer if it keeps you from popping off to another dimension.”

Percy snorts. 

They drive over to the storage facility after Percy cleans himself up and Tina cheers when Percy slams the pickup truck through the gated fence at speed, it gives spectacularly, mostly rust and vines after the years abandoned. Tina brought a bolt cutter because she’s industrious and they break into the padlocked door to the main office.

Dust covers everything but there are no bodies, no remnants of the town’s sins. An old metal desk is loaded up with VHS tapes and an old television, clearly the security camera recordings for the facility. They ignore this though, donning leather work gloves they go at the arranged filing cabinets and drawers strewn around the small room. Percy sits on the edge of a dusty futon and pages through a stack of rental forms for the storage units while Tina perches herself against the old desk taking care with the VHS tapes not to disturb them.

They discard pages into new stacks as names blur together and then Tina finds a series of papers concerning a break in. The most promising piece of information so far they sit on the futon edge together to read over the paper, which is when Tina points out that the belongings remaining were shifted to a new unit. “We could get into that one, give our legs some stretching.”

Percy nods and they leave the office behind after securing the door back loosely with some twine.

“Okay I’ll bet you it’s guns or something.” Tina says as they count unit numbers.

“Someone’s junk collection.” Percy shoots back.

It’s neither ultimately they find when they break open the padlock with Tina’s bolt cutters, leaning into it together to snap the metal. The shadows inside don’t want to give way but they do sluggishly, a room long dormant breathing in the hot summer day and expelling dust motes and the musty air of long silent years. It is filled floor to ceiling with suitcases, steamer trunks, duffel bags, like the lost and found of a New York subway station. Tina and Percy both take a different trunk and they’re each filled with a life of belongings. Clothing, pictures, in Percy’s a baby spoon and a box of stickers, in Tina’s a signed baseball and a wooden recorder.

Further exploration shows much the same, none of the pieces are empty, and there are no answers to the voices trapped in these dusty time capsules.

“Where did all these people go?” Tina tilts her head when they’re back outside, lunchtime driving them out finally in search of food.

Percy is securing the unit back again with more twine, it wouldn’t keep a person out but animals would have a time getting through at least. “If it were an accident, the authorities would have sent the belongings home to their next of kin.” Percy glances toward the office and his shadow stretches long beneath him, out and out, telling him the time but he’s not paying attention.

Tina is and she shoves her hands into her pockets and rocks on her heels, “Lunch first, then we’ll get more into it.”

But it doesn’t take Percy the entire time to drive back into town and settle at the diner to piece together the variables, “They’re from the church.”

“Hu?” Tina pauses in her pastrami and rye, confused, but makes the jump quick enough, “Were they radicals of some kind? In everything I read on the place they sounded kind of bland.”

Percy remembers a boy burning for a kind touch, a life strictly regimented, and a mother often gone but with a presence whose terror never left. “I think we’re seeing the congregation from before this influx. These people aren’t locals, why put all your most loved things in a box if you live a couple miles from the storage unit?”

“But why the church? Maybe they were people up from the south looking for a job at the mills?” She doesn’t believe this, it’s clear they’re testing the hypothesis. Percy hasn’t finished his slice of pie and it’s anxiety inducing sitting on the plate, he takes a bite as if he can still feel the hunger, but his shadow doesn’t feel like people do anymore.

“Then they’d be in a boarding house or a lodging of some kind, a duffel bag or steamer trunk doesn’t need to be locked away, they could keep it with them. But someone or an organization trying to control you? They’re going to want to lock those things away, teach you they’re not needed, that you don’t need those memories. Then someone decides, fuck that, they do. You get a break in, they shift the unit around.”

“That’s not a church Percy, that’s a cult.”

He nods, slowly, remembers to finish his pie. “Yeah.”

Queenie sends them back out with another slice of pie that Percy settles into the heavy ivy growing over the fence line around the storage facility when they get back.

“Does he really eat the things you leave out?”

“He does, or the woods do, I don’t ask.” Percy has faith in Credence, which is the part that matters.

They poke around the now agreed upon storage unit for the church but find nothing promising in the confines, just more memories without people to attach them to. Percy reties the twine and they go back to the front office. They’re there when the sun sets and Percy pulls his truck up to the door and turns the engine over, headlights illuminating the office into the night. They both look up nebulous night hour, eyes burning, Queenie’s bike bell ring-ring-ringing through the dark.

“I brought dins!” She’s still wearing her uniform and they break for dinner, all of them sitting on the dusty floor of the office to eat spaghetti off paper plates, plastic forks, paper napkins. Percy eats more garlic bread than pasta but his leftovers go where the pie plate had been, gone now.

“Why not just get into all of them? There can’t be what, a hundred units?” Queenie options when Percy comes back in. 

Tina and Percy shrug, it would be illegal for one, but so is breaking into any of the units to begin with, it would be time consuming but they just wasted a whole day here already. 

Tina snaps her bolt cutter, click clack, grins.

“Just one tonight Goldstein and Goldstein.” But he leads them out and past the first few units, “Queenie why don’t you chose for us?”

“It’s always exciting to do vaguely illegal things, Tina never used to let me have fun like this you know, you’re a good influence on her.”

Tina click clacks her bolt cutters again, “Technically okay I mean, if we’re going with the hypothesis that this place isn’t a part of the rest of the world then we and the people here are the governing body. So we make the laws.”

“Our town now.” Queenie snorts.

“Have you two been discussing reality without me?” Percy smirks. “Don’t go on too far, Credence doesn’t like to think Jacob isn’t real.”

“Of course my honey is real, everything is real, just real _here_ which isn’t everywhere else.” Queenie’s logic is flawless, the shadows sing, chitter and cicada song, unseasonable for summer according to Newt. 

Queenie pauses them before a unit at random and Percy holds his maglite up for Tina. She snaps the padlock on the door using her whole weight and jumps off to add gravity and pressure to the snip. The metal isn’t rusted, surprising in comparison to the other doors, there isn’t anything particularly sheltering here to protect the unit but when Tina swings the door open it’s not just the lack of rust. Care in the upkeep, a time capsule worse than the unclaimed baggage. This is a different kind of baggage. Thousands of notebook pages, the same legal notepad kind Percy uses, careful script, hundreds of photographs, the woods, town buildings, people, the dead - as they were in the late seventies to early eighties.

In the middle of the unit is a table dust-free like the immaculate floor, a briefcase, open and empty, a bottle of coke older than Queenie and Tina unopened. 

Tracking along the walls are black threads, connecting, weaving, hundred of sewing pins. “Way to go Queenie, now we’ll never get to sleep!” Tina grouses.

“We’ll come back tomorrow.” Percy says jaw tight. His shadow rises up like moon-soaked tide, “Credence _stop, no._ Get back here!” But he isn’t being listened to. Familiar, whispers, familiar handwriting.

Credence isn’t anything more than a shape of a boy, black and holy, Percy can’t grasp at him like this. His television static hand draws against black thread, vibrates it like a music note.

Detective Graves braces himself on the table, frowns down at his expense reports and Credence pauses in the open door to the unit, hands fidgeting on the handlebars of his bike. He is beautiful to Credence, so devotedly focused, intense in the same way he is when he’s got his lips around Credence’s shame, when he’s turning him out of his clothing, when he’s reading whatever new book he’s come to the library for. Credence loves him, he wants to see him like this forever, unraveling a problem and pleased with the solution, even if the solution is taking Credence apart (especially then.)

And in this distance of time he’s been leaving work early, halving his volunteer time at the library, and sneaking around when Ma is far enough abroad not to catch wind of it, he knows how very unsustainable this is. How he will never get to keep this, soft affection and secrets. Detective Graves is still Detective Graves, no first name for Credence to use, no promises of a future. The lack of them probably soothes him more than anything else, no lies, no leading him on, just physicality and affection, and when he leans his bike against the open door the Detective looks up from the table and the smile to replace his frown is soft and warm, and the only kind of promise Credence can take.

“I brought you dinner.” Credence holds up tin-foil encased plates and the Detective pushes some of the things on his work table to the side.

They eat together, Credence carefully averting his eyes from most of the boxes and posted note-papers on the sparse walls of the storage unit. A box fan is set up to bring the night air in through the window and they sit facing it, side by side. Credence tells him about his shift at the paper and the Detective tells him about the updates he sent back to New York this morning. 

“You should get home.” But it’s not a dismissal, not at all, because Detective Graves’ plate is forgotten and he’s moved Credence’s out of his hands and he’s leaning into him, heavy hands summer-hot against Credence’s shoulder and back, curving Credence closer to him, eyes half-lidded, smile inviting.

They kiss and when they draw away Credence is standing in front of the strings, hand firm on the black thread that wasn’t there yet when a boy brought a man dinner in a desperate bid for affection. Percy’s hands are on his shoulder, his back, summer-hot and Queenie claps her hands together.

“Credence you’re not shadows! Good thing there’s leftover spaghetti!”

“You were only gone about half a minute this time.” Tina frowns, it’s dark in the storage unit, Percy’s maglite resting on the ground where he’d been before Credence had triggered the event.

“We had dinner. It was the baked chicken on the diner’s friday night menu.” Credence leans just a little into the hand against his back and Percy takes his weight.

“Oh.” Tina looks at the walls, bites her lip.

“We’ll come back tomorrow.” Percy stresses this hard, bottom line. So they close up the unit once more, twine but also Queenie’s bike lock, not that she ever uses it. The truck battery dies right about when they’re loading Queenie’s bike into the back and Percy jumps it off the spare battery he keeps under the tarp in the back, with a myriad other things, a tool box, a crow bar, the maglite of course.

“At least with someone working at the gas station again you won’t need to siphon gas off stray cars.” Queenie attempts to inject cheer back into the proceedings, but Tina and Percy are tired, and Credence is, not sure what he is anymore, but something not so cheerful.

When Queenie and Tina are home safe Percy pulls the truck off the road onto the overgrowth of weeds beside it, midway between town and the cabin. Dark and unsafe the woods look in at them and Credence feels the hour growing late on his skin. Not yet that dangerous period, but tonight is strange and he’s not sure what the moon wants from him. Percy gently lays his hand over Credence’s own clutched tight against his chest and pulls them away, gentle, settling. The moon, the woods, the lake within view far past thin pines, no longer matter as much as the man worried about him.

“I’m okay.” He offers a tentative smile.

“You’re not bleeding, your hands aren’t, I was worried with the way you were holding them.” Here Percy turns them over, to show the unmarred skin, no trace of red, no branding welts or cut palms. But Credence doesn’t feel like it’s really gone, this trauma is too deeply embedded, his body just isn’t his right now.

But the Ma of here preferred the cane to belt, and the Credence who brought baked chicken to his Detective had bruises and little else. “I’m okay Percy. You want to go back to the unit.”

“Queenie has the key to the bike lock.” Percy, intelligent, putting his ruin in other people’s hands. But Credence is the boy with chicken gambling his life on something not even as tentative as promises, far less than that, far less. Credence is smarter now than he’d been stepping off a lonely ferry, and the boy who was raised between pines over skyscrapers never fell for Gellert’s lies. Detective Graves is far too kind to make promises he can’t keep. So Credence knows that a bike lock is nothing.

“The crowbar. Even the maglite would break it.”

Percy raises his hands up, presses devoted kisses to his knuckles. “I’m a bad influence.”

“You don’t want me to see.”

Percy closes his eyes tight, “That I can become completely obsessed with something beyond any redemptive qualities? No, I really don’t.”

Credence bites his lip, “Is that what you did with me, before you came here?”

Percy squeeze his hands, presses his face down against them like a man in prayer. But Percy doesn’t pray, and he doesn’t believe in God as much as he believes in Credence. “It was easier to blame him leaving me on the medical condition.” Bitter, soft, “But I was always married to the job.”

“You still are, I don’t care Percy. I love you, I don’t care.”

That isn’t even true, Credence does care, but not in a way that makes him feel like he’s threatened by the regard Percy has for injustices to make right over relationships to keep steady. It’s the way of a teenager about to turn eighteen looking at their lover doing something they love and wanting nothing more than to watch that forever, knowing they can’t and oh God, oh Lord, does Credence understand when so often he isn’t him but a shadow, smoke, ink, suffering.

Percy lets his hands go and they turn back around and creep past the bakery and back into the storage facility.

Where Tina is waiting, looking half asleep, hunting rifle on her lap, a folding lawn chair procured from somewhere. She perks up when the truck is there, parked, and pats the battery powered storm lantern at her side, and the two others. Queenie’s bike is parked up against the unit behind her.

“Porpentina what are you doing here this late, you know it’s getting to the time you should be inside!” Percy is hard edged worry, slamming the truck door shut. Credence flows out of the passenger side after him, bemused, slow limbs and hunger, he can scent leftover spaghetti in the basket on Queenie’s bike.

“And let you get into Ghost You’s unit on your own uh nope sir, I don’t think so!” Tina pats the hunting rifle. “Come on.”

“Can I-” Credence pauses, cheeks flushed, Tina is up with rifle slung over her shoulder, already shoving the tupperware at him, a fork taped to the top. “Thank you.” He murmurs and she manages to push up all the way to her toes to ruffle his hair affectionately.

The unit is much brighter lit with all the storm lanterns set up and Percy and Tina take to studying opposite ends of the space, writing down in their notebooks salient details. Credence is focused on the pound and a half of pasta in his lap, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his hunger takes precedence over curiosity for now.

“It’s too much sir.” Tina says when Credence is down to sauce and a lone meatball floating around in the bottom of the tupperware, when the world outside is too quiet and too still, preternaturally empty. “We’re gonna have to come back or take it with us or something. He was so thorough.” It isn’t a complaint so much but neither Tina nor Percy are lazy in their investigative methods, and doing a sloppy job now is beyond the question. Credence has seen them work, seen them hunt down the location of the church and the doors that fit keys.

Percy is standing before a small section of wall that Credence can just barely see, there is a picture of him, but not him, an artifact out of time. He’s leaning up against a muscle car, shy smile, hand up over his face to hide it from bright sunset light. His arm is in a sling and Credence can tell just by looking at the picture and recognizing his own eyes staring back at him from mirrors and water’s reflection, the boy in that picture is happy, content, fearful maybe but filled with hope.

Percy pockets the picture carefully, back to Tina carefully and Credence feels a pang of something like jealousy but realizes there isn’t any reason for it, that’s him in Percy’s pocket anyway. “Yeah,” Percy sighs, agreeing with Tina, “We’ll lock it up for the night and come back in the morning with boxes and haul it over to the cabin. I need to drag the rest of those old school files out to the garden shed anyway, I’ve been putting it off.”

“The world is waking up.” Credence puts the tupperware on the back of Queenie’s bike and Tina looks at him in concern. Percy just tilts his head and looks out to the pitch black, the place their lights don’t cover, he can’t see what Credence can, but he is astute, the Detective, the Officer, and now just Percy with his maglite and a hard look into shadows.

“He’s right, we’ve stuck out too long, best we stay the night out here, get some sleep in the truck cabin Tina, I’m gonna keep poking around.”

Credence waits till it’s soft breath, an hour later, Tina finds it hard to sleep at first and he can sympathize. Even when she’s in deep dreams he keeps his voice a whisper in regard to her fatigue. A good friend to Percy, and once upon a time she’d been a good friend to the boy he’d been too, always trying to shove the tip right into his hands, and what money Ma had taken from him in his flight had been a portion from her.

“This used to be my favorite time of the day. No one around to side eye how strong I was making the coffee. Used to pull the graveyard shifts just to sink into the quiet and then I was working a nine to five, or as close to one as you got. But I’d still wake up as early as I could, just to live in the stillness.”

Credence pushes himself to sit on the edge of the table, watches Percy tracking obsession with hands and eyes, and a heavy heart. “I always liked working in the soup kitchen because it was early in the day and quiet, people lining up for coffee and food, and I knew how it was to be hungry, to break the fast so I tried to get everything open quickly but it was nice even when I was rushing, because it was usually just me until the later volunteers got in. Before that I was usually in the print room getting flyers and posters ready for the morning.”

“Yeah, that room was small, how did you even fit around in it?” Percy shakes his head and it’s like a slap to the face. Of course Credence understands, Credence knows. But Percy admitting in parts and then Percy saying he’d been in a place Credence had spent so much time of his life before this journey over the River Styx backwards, well that’s a different thing.

“Ma taught us that God was in Grace, clumsiness and idle hands are the tools of the devil.”

“What a fucking shrew.” Percy hisses, turns to a different wall, but it’s more of the same, endless unanswered questions.

Credence draws forward, captures their hands together in a tangle, forces Percy to look up at him. “Did you go into my room?”

Percy’s face is pale, maybe it’s the lighting, maybe it’s hunger, Credence feels his own resurfacing, useless empty body, ever needful. “Had to rule out suicide, so we-” and Credence cuts him off, squeezes his hand and shakes his head.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind that you were there. She didn’t throw everything out?”

Percy shakes his head and Credence looks at him and when Percy reaches out to touch his cheek, rub his thumb over Credence’s jaw, he leans into it. “There wasn’t much but your little sister said it was all you’d had to begin with. The second time I visited, I found a secret compartment under the bed.” The apology in his tone is so heavy so thick, shame he shouldn’t have in the sweet cadence of his voice, Credence doesn’t want that shame there, to color how Percy feels about him. 

He flushes softly, one porn magazine, “Okay, I’d of rather you found that over Ma anyway.”

“You clearly have a type.” Percy’s shame coalesces into something else, Credence follows the flow carefully, the expression as it becomes wry smile, self-depreciation, bemusement.

“You know I didn’t have a lot of opportunities to purchase literature of a sexually photographic nature and I think you are unjustly determining my type based on one magazine you found under my bed.” Credence manages to hold his chin high, his cheeks burn like they’ve been slapped though.

Percy tangles him up in his arms, around his back, a hand heavy on his hip, chest to chest. The heat is only made worse, now from proximity and summer night and skin to skin. “Leather Daddies in Bondage Paradise?”

Credence buries his face against Percy’s shoulder, “I found it in one of the donation boxes for the Church really, really, I did.”

Percy laughs, “Okay sweetheart. So when I said I was going to haul you around to the doctor that first day in the diner you capitulated because you realized it was the best for your well being to let me care for you?”

Credence groans again, rubbing his face on Percy’s shoulder, “Stop making fun of me.”

A gentle kiss against his hair, a squeeze that lifts him off his feet, “Oh sweetheart, darling, I’m not.”

Credence flushes darker when he’s set back on the table edge, looks up at Percy when the man cups his face in both hands, looks down at him, warm affection in his honey-dark eyes. Oh, Credence tracks emotion, such love and care, gratitude.

“You are all I have ever wanted, and I have to earn to keep you. I didn’t manage the first time around.” Or the second, but this isn’t a second chance or even third as much, Credence is beginning to understand, as much as Percy longs for it to be just that, that he gets to keep Credence this time around even as he regularly loses him to dust and shadow, that he can earn him at all. “I love you.” Percy says, “And I’ll wear a leather jacket if I ever find one just for you.”

Credence pecks a kiss to his lips, straining in his grasp, and then it’s deeper and yet softer, ebbing tide, full moon, quiet night. “You don’t need one.” Or, Credence isn’t sure what sort of disconnect he’d have to do to keep from saying something absolutely stupid and embarrassing over that. Percy kisses him again instead of responding, so it’s sort of a response anyway, one Credence fears might mean eventually he’s going to have to figure out how to delete any form of paternal address out of his vocabulary entirely.

Percy gets back to the walls and Credence gets back to watching him, and the hunger grows, but now it’s partially leather jackets and dull magazine pages Credence can barely remember, and Percy, so much Percy.

They make it any number of minutes more before the hunger hits a peak and Percy turns almost slamming into him, hands heavy hot against Credence’s face, against the side of his neck, thick body pushing insistently between long legs. Credence thinks now would be a good time to stop existing, Tina asleep however many feet away but it doesn’t happen. His own hunger crests in the press of weight against him, the hot breath against his lips before it's pressure instead, and he opens his mouth to it, rosemary tomato sauce and Percy laughs against his lips and the hunger swells, and he wants oh so much does he want.

It is filling him up but it isn't enough, it's never enough, and as Percy touches him he wants for more, strains in the small amount of space he has on the table until he's almost falling off of it. He can sympathize with the boy who brought his chicken dinner, innocence looking to be destroyed, and it's wrong certainly - Percy's judgement of it, his anger and self hatred, tells Credence enough that it is, but he can still feel it, the desire, the validation. The need to be touched and given praise.

To be desired in turn, and Percy does, and the Detective did, so clearly. Credence doesn't need a vision to tell him this makeshift office had seen intimacy, he can feel it in his bones right now, the familiar way Percy slides his hands down to curve under Credence's thighs and shift him up, off balance on the table, to touch the back of his legs, the edge of his backside through jeans. It's too hot, too stifling, and also it's not enough pressure, he wants Percy on top of him, and also with startling clarity he wants Percy inside of him.

The hunger bites into him, he gasps and Percy groans, mouth falling to Credence's neck which bares itself in the space and it's lips against heated skin, soft comforting whispers. The hunger is painful, too painful for this intimacy to continue, and Percy is a delicate lover, careful.

The Detective would never have known the pain he caused his boy, and Credence wishes Percy didn't either, would never want to inflict this upon him but it's what Percy wants. To know, to understand, to care for. Credence's bleeding skin that first day and a man filled with so much pain and loneliness desperate to do something about it. When Percy turned around and bled for Credence it was a natural progression, what Percy wouldn't give for him, and in that Credence understands too.

A boy in the past knew it couldn't last and he set himself up for the heartbreak anyway, hunger unfulfilled, destructive.

Percy is still whispering to him and now Credence can hear it, soft words, assurances, that he's still here, that they have all night, that it's just them. Percy knows the shape of his hunger, except what he's saying are lies, yet Credence is still reassured by them anyway because well, they don't have forever and they're not alone, but it's good just to have Percy telling him that, that his hunger won't kill them, that he's wanted.

There is more than just Tina outside and there are eyes watching them when Percy kisses a trail against his sweat-damp chest through thin flannel shirt. Credence looks down at him, the way Percy's brow is drawn, the darkness of his eyelashes against summer-tanned skin, the stubble on sharp jaw, it makes his breathing go shallow and still, his chest labor. Percy looks up at him from between his parted legs, kneeling on the dusty ground, obsession and desperation all around them and also right there in the intensity of that gaze.

Credence isn't the only one who feels hunger.

"You have to be quiet." Percy whispers and Credence puts his hand up to his mouth and muffles himself, chest so sharp with breath it's painful, he bites his own hand when Percy undoes the front of his jeans, "That's it sweetheart nice and quiet."

Credence almost cries, his body so sensitive, he's shaking so bad, and Percy isn't helping, smiling up at him, knowing, knowing what he's doing.

It's hard just to watch him, to watch Percy pull him straining pain from the tightness of his jeans, strong broad hands on the most shameful part of him. Right now he's feeling very little shame though, breath shallow, teeth sharp, eyes blown. Percy smiles warmly up at him, affection, and Credence watches helplessly as sure lips wrap around the tip of him.

It's bitter, he knows, but Percy's eyes flutter partway shut like it's divinity, and Credence shudders, hand tightening on the edge of the table till his knuckles are white and the sharp line of the linoleum ending cuts into his palm.

Percy grips him at the base, heat and zipper teeth, sure hand heavy. Kisses his fist and takes Credence into swallowing throat and Credence has to bite into himself sharper still, muffled sounds, unable to close his eyes even though it's too much to watch Percy between his legs, looking like he's taking communion on Credence's cock.

A few strokes, a happy sigh that vibrates right through Credence all the way to the core, and he's so close, crying for real now, tears salty on his cheeks, the hunger, the need, it's all too much. Percy draws off, and Credence moans like he's in pain because he is, hand blood sharp tang in his mouth. He's brought down off the table into Percy's lap, sitting straddling him on the floor and Percy kisses his cheeks, draws his hand away to kiss bloody teeth imprints and also the line of the table edge. Credence is painful between them, panting, flushed and fever sick.

"Shh, shh, it's alright kitten." Percy whispers and Credence feels like something is coming, his body already prepping for it, breathing shallower now, the shame between them pulsing in Percy's loose grip, "Just hide your face against Daddy's shoulder, he's got you."

Oh, oh fuck, fuck him, Credence gasps, eyes wide, startled shock, Percy strokes him stiff and sharp, once, and again, and Credence does it, hides his face against Percy's shoulder because he's helpless to stop the sounds coming out of him now. Percy's free arm tightens around him, holding steady, and Credence jerks in his lap, hips against the hand fisted around his flesh. He comes like that, clinging to Percy, gasping breathless, panting with pain-tight chest.

When he can think again, be again, breath soft panting steady takes against Percy's shoulder, his face flushes, he goes still, fearful.

"Was that okay?" And the self doubt in Percy's voice banishes the tension, the dread, that Percy would ever make fun of him genuinely. The embarrassment comes but it's much lighter and more focused on how he could have thought Percy would judge him like that to begin with when Percy was the one saying it.

Credence nods, and struggles with words, "It's not the age thing or the family thing, it's just, safety? Or something, I-" Credence moves his face again, to press against Percy's throat, "It's security."

Percy cleans his hand off on the bottom of his jeans which Credence registers vaguely as being disgusting but necessary, and then Percy is holding him with both arms, pressed close.

"I've got you." Percy whispers and Credence shivers into him, eyes closed, arms around broad shoulders.

They sit in the dark like that, eyes outside waiting, but they're safe in here, in the circles of light and the truck a wall bracketing them in. The night ticks on and voices whisper from the woods but they're far enough away not to hear them.

"I love you." Credence whispers when it's just the soft hunger of a mostly full stomach and the need that had crested in him has abated. Percy nuzzles his hair, presses a kiss to his temple.

"I love you too, Credence."

He wonders if the boy ever heard those words, and he hopes he did, he really does.

They wake Tina shortly before dawn and Credence spends most of the day at the diner napping on one of the booth seats, listening to patrons come and go while Percy and Tina box up the storage unit.

"We still have to find the unit for the sheriff's department." Percy says over lunch, chicken and noodles over a bed of mashed potatoes that Credence has already glutted himself on.

"Not tomorrow you're not, no sir!" Queenie chirps, refilling Percy's coffee and they look at her with some measure of confusion, she flushes, tilting her head, "It's your birthday Percy, hun."

Percy swallows a few times, and Credence feels some measure of the same shock Percy is clearly experiencing. "I forgot." Percy sets his coffee down carefully.

"So no work! We're gonna have a cake in the afternoon and then you can run off and do whatever you want."

Credence knows what _he_ wants to do for Percy, but highly doubts his lover will accept that as a birthday gift. Especially concerning how they've been progressing thus far.

"If you want, you can borrow my boat." Newt says from his place on a stool at the island in the middle of the diner. "Go fishing or just check out the lake." That Newt's boat was stolen from someone's yard is an unspoken, it's more everyone's boat. Really it's just nice that he's offering and Credence smiles at him and receives a soft smile in turn.

Percy thanks Newt and doesn't directly turn him down, kindness in turn that makes Newt turn from him back to his lunch with a smile and a shrug.

"Besides my sweetie spent half the morning prepping chocolate for you, you better come for cake." Queenie pinches Percy's cheek which burns red and then her heels click away, back to work.

Tina spears a piece of chicken on her fork, "Although, if you really want to tackle units for your birthday what can she say?"

Credence frowns, but Percy is laughing softly, "No Porpentina, I think I'm going to take Newt up on his offer to borrow his boat." A half finished plate of noodles pushes in front of Credence and his attention shifts to the food over the polite discussion of things Percy will need to know about the boat. When Newt has gone off to make sure all his patches are held and Tina dips back to the kitchen to get a bowl of ice cream from the freshly restocked freezer Percy leans in enough to brace Credence in the booth.

"Gonna come and stick your nose into units with us or do you need me to drive you back to the cabin? I can't imagine you're getting any rest with all the repopulated townsfolk coming in to gossip."

Credence turns his head, brushing a kiss to Percy's cheek, and his own flush dark and hot, it's audacity but Percy just blinks and then smiles at him, pleasantly surprised. "I think I want to go break into the library." Credence puts his spoon down to Percy's gentle laughter.

"Have fun, if you see any weird shit hightail it back to the diner, seems quiet here."

He promises and kisses Percy on the cheek again and then purposefully climbs over his lap to get out of the booth, bracing a hand right on the crotch of his jeans in as direct and purposeful a manner as possible, "Yes, daddy." He says in passing, breath catching and body a quiver of nerves at the look of dazed shock on Percy's handsome face.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry." Credence half hides his face, he'd tried, clearly, but - and then Percy is gently taking his hand and tugging it down, to press his lips to his knuckles.

"You're gonna fuckin' kill me Credence." Percy rasps out and Credence feels a little less self conscious at least. "Be safe sweetheart, I mean it. Don't try eating anything bigger than you are." Percy's smile is so warm and he squeezes Credence's hand again and it's so affectionate, so soft that Credence doubts his desire to part from him. But libraries had books, and he needed to research.

"You too." And then Credence is decking out before he can stop himself from leaving completely.

The library is quiet and dark and now also intimately familiar. Dust tracks under his fingertips but everything stays in the present and Mr. Peel is long gone, his replacement also absent, if there had ever been a replacement. Credence walks the stacks of old books, stale air and stillness. The medical section is small and the human reproductive system in regards to sexual education even smaller. He stands in the light from a dusty window with the broad shapes of trees in the distance looking in at him judgmentally and flips through the sections with a single-minded focus.

Pornography and horrific descriptions after bible study were not a very good basis to build one's understanding of sexual congress from, even worse Credence is sure the pornography is leaving out some salient details.

The reference section helps less than he’d of liked but he's not alone here. Or he is for the most part but his shoes carry him through dusted over footprints and he wasn't the first Credence to look for answers.

There is a small section, a ribbon before the stack, Mr. Peel was a passionate man when it came to Librarian Sciences, and to that end he also kept a banned book section carefully delineated as such. Credence removes the book with the Persian Bust on the cover and the deja vu is crippling but he stays where he is pretty resolutely.

It's violent and then it's not and he remembers the book paging through it even though he's never read it (but then again he has, just not here, just not this body with these particular scars.) Gentle, painful, and most of all he was right in his estimate that one needed more than just themselves for this particular party.

He puts the book down and thanks Mr. Peel silently, who always kept his reading choices a secret, carefully guarded from Ma, hidden in the stacks and in his locker at school. A world barred him at home, and Credence had no such protector in New York, but Credence was here now, and New York no longer mattered. The room with his things Ma hadn't yet thrown away, Modesty's tears, and his secrets under the floorboards, a short lifespan of heartbreak.

Chloe is watching a soap opera with track lines through the screen, outdated analog signal, she waves at him, "Hey there Credence, you're off from the paper early today."

"Mouse has a headache, so we shut the press down a little early." Credence is still himself despite the words coming free of him no longer belonging to him. He goes with it and settles into the small pharmacy section, there isn't very much variety and he flushes reaching out.

The condoms are strange in his hand, a spike of forbidden that settles into him and stings. This is all he bought, his memory whispers, he'd lost his nerve and it had been easier to blush his way through Jennifer asking him which girl he was keen on. Credence now reaches out for the small box of lubricant and holds his breath, putting both on the counter with trembling hands.

Chloe starts to ring him up, her gaze on the TV before she stills, holding the box of KY, blinking curiously. "Oh."

"What?" Credence demands, he tries to sound sharp, to be direct and have a spine, it just sounds panicky.

"This one is outdated, you better go get a different one."

He wilts through reading expiration dates before finally carting back a box that isn't outdated. "Do they, do they even really go bad? It's just-" he waves his hand at the box.

"I dunno, my girlfriend and I've never done penetration." Chloe bites her lip, "Better to be safe than sorry."

He hides the bag in the office and promptly forgets it when Queenie puts him to work waiting tables during the dinner rush. When Percy and Tina come in right after sunset he's got the apron for the diner on and his hair up in one of Queenie's scrunchies. Percy catches him around the waist on his way back into the back and settles him on one knee. "Is this harassment?" Credence looks at Queenie, "Did I not pour his coffee fast enough?"

"No I'm ordering takeout."

Queenie drags Tina away before her opinions can get too loud.

"We don't do takeout, we've not got boxes for that." Credence smiles through his explanation.

"I don't think you'd fit in a box anyway sweetheart, go give Queenie back her apron and hair thingy, I am itching to get a shower, there was so much dirt in those units, ugh."

"Did you find the right one?" But Credence's answer comes in the subdued secretive smile Percy gives him.

"Tell you all about it over dinner."

Queenie and Tina are hogging the air conditioner in the office when he dips back in to hang up his apron and hand back the scrunchie, they also very badly jerk away to pretend they weren't snooping into his bag from the corner store.

He freezes in the doorway like a deer in an alleyway getting into the trash, not so much headlights but clearly he's in trouble.

Tina opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out and she shuts it again. Queenie holds the bag out for him, taking blame. "It just fell open when we-" she sighs, "Okay that's a lie we totally stuck our noses in honey. Do you know what to do with this stuff?"

Credence nods very carefully, a book, terror mongering, and a pornographic magazine were going to have to be enough.

"And you're ready for whatever you're ready for?" Tina manages to speak finally, although it's clearly aborted and stiff and not fully structured thoughts. He nods anyway even though he's now not so sure. Percy wasn't particularly keen on reciprocation so far, the truck the other night being his one frame of reference on that. His anxiety has more to do with upsetting Percy somehow rather than worrying about the semantics.

"Okay." Tina nods stiffly and Queenie throws her a politely surprised look. "Just remember if you don't like anything you can say no even if you liked it at first."

Credence nods.

"Good luck!" Queenie smiles bright as summer sun and Credence hightails it back to the front of the diner and then outside where Percy is waiting warming up the engine.

He tries to hide the bag by shoving it under the seat while climbing in but Percy lets that slide only far enough to get them past the main buildings, "Whatcha buy?"

Credence flushes, "Birthday presents." Technically not a lie.

Percy mumbles something, and when Credence turns to look at him he's flushed, it's adorable.

"It's not what you're thinking, nothing like that." Credence promises, "It's something for both of us."

"Not gonna tell me?" Percy smiles a little, some of the ire and embarrassment fading and Credence is glad he said the right thing, and it's true, it is for both of them. Even if now he's not sure he's ready to ask for that, as much as he wants it when the hunger hits him.

Credence shakes his head and Percy changes the subject, telling him about the unit full of unicycles they found, the two filled to the brim with old paintings, and the unit with nothing more in it than a box of gold doubloons. "I'm sure the last one is fake but Tina said she wanted to get it tested. Not sure where she expects to get them tested though."

They eat dinner, which is hot dogs and chili from the diner, sitting side by side on the sofa in the living room and there are so many boxes from the storage units filling up the floor space. Credence steals glimpses of the subdued excitement in Percy, the gaze that falls over all of them because it's more information, more of the puzzle to piece together. His hunger is sated but there is something else inside of him aching, and he knows it for what it is, affection, love, adoration.

To watch Percy's passion simmer under the surface, it's endearing and Credence could watch him all day, but day is quickly fading.

"So Pepper Olis, we found her belongings in storage, and a bunch of other evidence, it's a fair bit better protected than the other units so we left it all back there with a new padlock from the hardware store. Good they decided to give us back Frank or we'd of had to send Tina onto the roof to get in."

"What did you find?"

"That Pepper was a very devoted Christian and was probably working in town at the dive bar mildewing on the lakefront. There were some paystubs tucked into a well-notated Bible as well as a flyer from a women's bible study at the church."

Credence considers the empty plates and decides to leave them for tomorrow, instead he moves to the ground, pushing his way between Percy's legs, but here he just rests, back to the sofa, dragging a box closer to go through the contents. Behind him Percy starts playing with his hair, carding through it, collecting it, repeating.

"Is Pepper the one the Detective found?"

Percy makes a noise of consideration behind him, "I've been wondering that, but I don't think the timing fits. Unfortunately I think he was right in his initial hunch. I think the first body was Faith."

Credence, and the Credence that came before, know this too, heavy heart, that Faith never made it to college, that she never made it out despite all the belief Credence had in her, all she had going for her with looks and wit, and if Faith died unnamed in the woods, what hope did Credence have of making it out?

Except of course, Credence as he is, never had a sister Faith. He had Modesty and Chastity and Ma had all of them because of the foster system. They weren't stolen away from loving parents, they were just abandoned or left behind and no one wanted them and Ma made sure they understood that.

"She didn't have much with her, a backpack of clothing and the bible which is where she kept important papers." Percy begins to braid Credence's hair back and it's the first time Credence considers he probably needs a haircut. Being some sort of wood devil, monster, whatever he is had lapsed him in his attentiveness to hair length. But then again Ma wasn't around to tell him he looked dirty with his hair that long. "Oh and a little sun-catcher of a cross."

"We would make those in Sunday school." Credence murmurs and it's not Credence.

The Detective is sitting in the back seat of his car, with Credence tucked between his legs, back to chest, they're so close and it's intimate the way they whisper and still hear so much. It's dark and Credence isn't really sure where they are past close, past together, and really that's all that matters to him right now. That Ma is away with congregation members and Modesty is having a sleepover.

"Ms. Olis was helping out with the class, I think one of the little ones made her one." Credence has his own small collection of faux-stained glass ornaments. Ma can't chide him for hanging the colorful images in his bedroom window because they're from her congregation, she looks at him like she knows he just likes them for the bright rainbows of light though, judges him sinful.

"She was last seen with a few members of the women's bible study having dinner at the diner. Did she have many friends at the church?"

No one from the sheriff's department had come to ask them questions, no one had interviewed Ma or her Bible study, and no one had ever asked Credence anything suspect about the church until Detective Graves. "No, she was very quiet, she mostly liked the children, but Mrs. Przybylski was trying to get her to rent a room for cheap, she's a widower and there was concern about Ms. Olis living out of a tent, it wasn't respectable you know?" Credence doesn't know, he's just repeating what they'd said in whispers, what he'd heard. Looking at his life, he'd rather the tent over Ma's strict tyranny anyway. "She had a spare room and I know they left together, I don't know if she was one of the ones at the diner with her though."

"Mousey with thick glasses?"

Credence nods.

"Yeah, she was there, two others too, they split up and Pepper optioned to walk back to her campsite but the attendant said she never made it in." The Detective doesn't tell him what happened next but Credence has heard it in whispers, at school, at church, horrified and excited. She'd been cut open, her insides removed, Marilyn in fifth period said her brother threw up when they had to move her for the medical examiner. As Marilyn's brother is a deputy, and Credence has seen him look seasick over roadkill, he believed her over most others.

Credence turns in the embrace only to find himself pushing up along the sofa, face to face with Percy, whose hands are clutched against his shoulders.

"That's never going to not be disconcerting." Percy moves an inch forward to brush their lips together. "Let's grab a shower and hope they don't fucking talk murder in the bathroom."

It's getting easier to move around each other, even when Credence gets distracted by skin to skin or a brush of Percy's hand. His thoughts easily break from campsites and murder mysteries, back to his own investigation from earlier today. He'd forgotten the bag under the seat but it would last for tonight. Still it fills him with a giddy sort of combined anticipation and dread. Desire and fear are a heady mix and Percy seems ambivalent toward any further step of their physical relationship.

Credence suspects he's not ambivalent, he's just very polite and understanding, very considerate of Credence's age and inexperience. Library books, Credence flushes, library books were his answer to this? He should have just asked Percy directly.

"What's wrong sweetheart?" Percy swipes his thumb against Credence's cheek and it drags him out of his own fears.

"It's okay," It is, looking down at Percy it is okay, "Just thinking. Let's get some sleep, you must be tired after moving all those boxes today."

"Made Porpentina do half of it anyway but yeah I'm fucking beat, can't pull all-nighters like that anymore. I didn't get the luxury of a nap." It's not to guilt Credence, he knows, as Percy ruffles his newly washed hair with the towel. "You'll have to watch the boat for us tomorrow though, I always get groggy with all the rocking."

"Of course." A smile to accompany, Credence hadn't been sure if he'd be wanted on the trip, which, arguably he should have known better. It isn't even any doubt of Percy's affection for him so much as his own self hatred. But it's so clear now anyway, and after the year behind them, how could Credence even doubt it? Percy bled to keep him close for the same occasion, of course he wanted him there with him on his birthday.

It's hard to feel it out right now, with the world so alive, with the summer sun so hot even in the dark quiet of night, how much time he has left to be himself, to be the boy from New York and not the ghost of smoke and shadow. But he can't keep fearing time, it will take what it wants, it will give only what it chooses to give. They have each other regardless of the shape a body makes, Percy loves him and that's the most important part.

They tangle up on the bed in the dark and like this quiet and together bodies don't matter as much anyway. He's sated, hunger abated, and it's just the breath between them, hot skin and no covers, laying over the sheets with their limbs entwined.

He never would have had this in New York. Gellert never wanted him like this if he ever even wanted Credence at all and Percival Graves the officer was in a relationship, not to mention married to his job, and Credence was just a kid, hopeless, naive in the worst way, and jaded enough to make it all that much more a tragedy. Percy wouldn't have been Percy back there, three years of stifling loneliness in this place had cut his teeth, worn down rigid edges.

The obsession seeded, but it was the waiting that gave Credence a chance. How sad, it never would have been enough, how sad it took such sacrifice to bring them together.

Credence with his soda pop and bruises, that Credence hadn't sacrificed to have hot hands upon him, to be taken apart the way they needed. But the Credence lying tangled with a drifting Percy in the twilight before dreams suspects his sacrifice came after and it was far more painful than the one he paid this time around.

His dreams don't validate that, he goes through subsequent period blocks, schools shift between New York and Washington and the classrooms look different but he can't make out any faces. He doesn't remember the lessons and no one notices when he leaves the classrooms early. He gets into the backseat of Gellert's car and is fed a cherry and given hollow praise. He gets into Detective Graves' backseat and they lay together, tangled up and still for hours, just being together.

When he wakes up they're still tangled together, and there are faces, small featureless faces, peering in at them from outside, unblinking, little gored open mouths sing, black empty maws. Credence hisses and draws the blinds, only realizing after he's done so that he hadn't left the bed to do it. The extra parts of him are swallowed back in and he trembles and shakes in the dark, terrified but finding acceptance. Of course the monster is still him, even when he doesn't look it. The trauma is still written on the marrow of his bones, the impression of his consciousness, what did he expect?

Then he's falling away but he's not, and his body is tangled with Percy but it's also crawling across the floor, it's outside the cabin, finding small things with their little inhuman faces and gobbling them up, greedy, hungry. He's in the water, silver-moonlight and cool stones, bathing away blood. He's rotting in the woods and he's hanging from trees and he's drifting off in abandoned tents and the back of old empty cars.

When he takes in a shuddering sobbing breath Percy wakes up and cups his face and Credence is nowhere else but here even though he knows that's not entirely accurate.

"What's wrong?" Percy whispers, and Credence doesn't have the words to give him, so he leans into him and kisses him, soft and short and shakes his head.

"My little ghost." A sweet refrain, and Percy is so affectionate in the dark of their bed, although what kind of temerity Credence has to claim it theirs. "I love you so." Percy sing-songs and it brings a shuddering laugh, a sniff to end the tears.

He leans in, resting their foreheads together, closes his eyes and loses himself in the way Percy rubs a line up and down the shape of his spine. "Nightmare?"

No, except yes, but the nightmare is Credence, not any dream. He nods anyway, it's close enough.

"I'm right here, and if you get lost I'll always find you." Percy is so tired, his voice bleeds reassurances but the fatigue is syrup thick, words half-slurred. "We'll be okay."

Credence can't really believe that but he wants to, he wants to believe they'll be okay, if this is purgatory Ma would be so angry, but to stay here eternally with Percy would be far preferable to heaven. He can cope with inhuman anatomy, with shattered cognition, with memories he doesn't own - he just needs Percy to keep finding him, to be allowed to keep his promise.

"Shh, c'mere, let me hold you." Percy moves him before he can capitulate, head tucked to shoulder, arms a careful bracket, dark and quiet. No eyes through windows, no little maws singing, nothing outside because Credence was hungrier than he realized.

They lay together and in time Percy's breathing measures out, soft and steady in sleep. The sound of it, the rise and fall against Credence lulls him down, not to sleep but somewhere kind and soft, somewhere quiet. 

To be held and to lay together, this is what he’d dreamt of in parts earlier, a boy and his lover in the back of a car stealing moments not meant to be and here he knows it’s a different kind of stolen time, where every breath is a race against what he may be, what he is, the payment he made to understand, to game the system, to give Percy a chance to do what he’d wanted (what this place wants of him.)

He doesn’t remember falling asleep but he wakes up groggy and heavy to the scent of frying bacon and far away soft voices. He shouldn’t hear them, but that’s a part of him now, too attuned to the vibrations of old still cabin, or Percy and Queenie’s voices. When he is dressed with clean hands and face he finds Tina in the pile of boxes, cataloging them as Percy does, her notebook and pencil balanced on one knee. “Morning Credence, I think breakfast is almost done. Well, very late breakfast, or is it still brunch?”

“I think brunch is right.” Credence sticks his head into the kitchen to see Queenie making pancakes a might larger than Percy’s standard, and also a decadent chocolate cake on the kitchen table.

“We figured we should come over before you guys vanished. Newt and Jacob are making grilled salads and bratwurst for actual lunch, they’re not here yet though, waiting on a shipment Jacob said.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen Percy eat a salad.”

Tina laughs and Credence feels glad she’d picked up on his dry tone as humor. 

Breakfast is a shared affair on the porch hiding from the heavy sun, and then there is lunch, or preparation for lunch, and Credence lays his head on Percy’s shoulder on the rickety porch swing and listens to Jacob telling Newt how best to cook a hot-dog. It is almost uncomfortably hot and the shade from the porch is necessary, he couldn't imagine being out on the lake right now, nothing but clear cloudless skies beating down on his skin. Bleaching bones, and no, no not that far, but his mind is telling him, empty sightless eyes, looking up, picked clean bones scattered along rocky shore. 

A girl named Sarah, a year and a half younger than Credence, she’d invited him to a birthday party once and Ma hadn’t let him go because boys and girls shouldn’t be at the same parties even when they’re five and it was bad enough the punishment was, that Credence had never asked to go to another party again, and when highschool came with football games and school dances he never went.

They found her three months after she went missing, when summer sun and animals had taken the soul out of her eyes and her eyes too. In the cavity of her chest there remained some meat, sinew dried, rotting lungs that carrion feeders hadn’t picked clean. 

Credence buries his face against Percy’s chest till the world is dark behind his eyelids, till the scent of beach-rot and dead girl is just spiced cheap corner store cologne and laundry detergent. Percy pets back his hair and half holds him. Over time the buzz of the past dies and it’s just the soft sound of their friend’s voices down in the sunlight, smoke over the grill, Percy’s hand gentle against his hair. “Okay there Sweetheart?”

Credence hums. “It must have been hard for him, knowing all of those people who died.”

Percy goes a bit, not rigid no, but tense, his hand a shiver against Credence’s hair, he tucks him closer, “He did?”

Credence nods, looking out at the others. Tina is spraying a mist of water at her sister and laughing, Jacob doesn’t notice Newt adding more eggplants to the grill. “They were all in or just over his age group, and he knew them through the church.”

Percy is quiet then, keeps Credence close, and Credence drifts, he doesn’t know what Percy is sinking his teeth into, but he can hear the gears turning.

Lunch is had and Percy entertains and is charismatic and bright and Credence keeps to corners and shade, but even then watching he can taste the charge in the air, Percy not completely in one place in his thoughts and it's the same purpose that drove him into old camp ground offices and abandoned sheriff stations where Credence was helpless but to follow. Churchyards and into the back of a car but that wasn’t him, yet still it was, Credence can’t pretend he wouldn’t do the same thing.

The boat is handed off, Jacob in sweet natured generosity loans them fishing poles, and then Queenie drags her sister off. Credence is moderately sure she was going to invite herself on the boat with them if given the opportunity. 

Newt goes along with them, peering at them from the back of Jacob’s car.

Turning toward Percy, Credence watches him measuredly, hears the car turn the corner along the lane, no longer visible thanks to thick pines. “What are you ruminating?”

Percy tangles him up, body heat and spice-scent and Credence tilts his head just right to the side to meet lips that taste of chocolate cake.

The boat waits another hour, the carpet on the living room floor isn’t very soft but Credence isn’t mostly on it anyway and Percy is the one who is going to end up with aches from hard-wood flooring.

When clothing is redrawn onto bruised skin Credence sits between Percy’s legs and buttons up his flannel shirt for him, hands slipping against strong chest with a look of soft bemusement.

Persistent, “But really, I want to know.”

A laugh, “My sweetest sunset, my full moon, other meteorological graces - you’re too bright.” Percy captures his lips again, leaning forward, but Credence leans back in turn, balanced on his heels.

“My bloodhound, my dearest tracker, my keen sharp-eyed knight.” 

Percy blinks, wetted-lips, “Oh that’s not fair. You’re not allowed to do it back, I’m a sensitive man.”

“My brightest guiding star.”

A groan, “Fine, fine, I was thinking of getting into the shed and looking for the student records, maybe nosing into-”

Credence cuts him off, “No we’re going in the boat and we’re going to attempt fishing.” He meets him halfway, “And then we’re going to try and see if we can’t find anything more at the hotel where Detective Graves stayed.”

Percy grins at him, and this time when he presses forward Credence moves inward in turn, and the kiss is lasting, longing, bitten lips and little gasps shared.

They’re a good distance onto the lake, four o’clock sun beating down and no breeze and Percy drops the oars in the surface and they lay out in the sun and pretend they’re fishing. They don’t have any bait or even any lures, and usually one doesn’t fish while laying down, but with their hands touching, Credence doesn’t really care that they’re not attempting to fish. Just being with Percy in the quiet is enough.

Just being with him is enough, and how stupid he was to give it up, to give in, to take the woods over distance. He could have waited, could have, and maybe they would have fallen together like this without so much loss.

But then again, a dead boy in New York wasn’t loved till he came up out of the water, wasn’t loved till a man was investigating his death and maybe Percy is just the kind to have to taste loss. Detective Graves wasn’t but they’re not interchangeable, as much as this island wants them to be. Credence curls his fingers around a thick wrist and Percy turns toward him just a little in the bottom of the boat, hot-skin, a sliver of a smile. Clouds roll over and Credence can see more than white-light and impressions.

“You are all I need.” Percy tells him, and he means it. Would give it up for him, to take him away, and Credence knows they can’t let it all go that easily.

“I love you.” Credence promises softly, and Percy takes his hand proper and kisses him once, a peck. They loiter on the lake, close and quiet, and Credence is drifting when they hit up against the far dock, where so long ago he’d thrown ferry fare to the rocks and waves, unwanted.

Sluggishly they move together up the old dock to the long lane of hotel rooms overlooking the water. Percy dips into the room but there isn’t anything more than what they’d found before. Credence stays outside, to shadowed lane, and trails his hand against dusty windows and boarded up doors. It’s pacification but he’s too far away when he hears the shouting, isn’t in direct range when he turns back to see Percy and a slight-framed woman arguing loudly.

But it’s not just any woman, not just any slight figure, and she’d always been deceiving in that manner. He knows her, standing there with chin up, even though she’d never wear clothing like that, Ma preferred her styles to be vaguely modern and dull. This woman looks like some relic time forgot, something off an oatmeal package, her hair swept back under a floral kerchief.

This woman is a ghost and Credence rushes along, heart in his throat, shadow sticking his shoes to the ground ineffectual and fearful. She doesn’t look like a ghost of course but none of this island does, she looks terrifying and ruthless in the quiet way he knew always meant suffering but Percy isn’t afraid, why would he be, railing against a woman he doesn’t really know.

“And I know you’ve been hanging around my son, you godless immoral man!” She can’t see Credence where he is behind her, but she wouldn’t be able to anyway, he wasn’t here for this. Percy wasn’t either but he plays the part of quiet hungry anger just fine.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about Pastor Barebone.” Percy lies, and so did Detective Graves, lied to protect tender skin and suffering, but there is no pacifying an evil ocean, a wrathful tide. She doesn’t storm off, she glides, in her wake lies that suffering. Percy screams obscenities after her and Credence isn’t sure if the words are Percy’s alone or not. Credence watches him kick the wall next to the open hotel room door and then turn, gathering Credence up in his arms, and Credence holds tight, he should have let Percy have his way, old files and dusty cabin, they should have stayed home.

“Oh sweetheart I’m so sorry.” 

Credence isn’t sure what Percy is apologizing for, and wonders if it’s something that happened long before them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> uh, just... thank you for reading thus far, if you drug yourself this far despite all my warnings I just... want to thank you for coming on the journey with me

**Author's Note:**

> works inspired by this that I made:
> 
> [Earn Your Comfort](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLmKWihCJWkhGbNGEv8o0oR4vKmnMl6olf) \- A playlist
> 
>  
> 
> [Smol soft art](https://polymathemadraws.tumblr.com/post/168269680625/the-most-delightful-thing-ive-done-so-far-this)
> 
>  
> 
> [Credence working for the paper](https://66.media.tumblr.com/f774a8277e7f5199894cba7ac8b5a873/tumblr_ondehhdZxy1sblzfao1_500.png)
> 
>  
> 
> [First sketch of Credence's clothing and appearance](https://66.media.tumblr.com/351f0182bf3f08698f84474eaa12475c/tumblr_om0nwqEMBT1sblzfao1_1280.jpg)
> 
>  
> 
> works inspired by this that other people made:
> 
> kona if you ever read this, can i link your art and that one pinterest board because damn that was Peak Aesthetic


End file.
